Let The Music Play

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem is a kenning and last appeared on the blog during the spring of 2010. It was less well received when I posted it on my general blog, but I have read it at poetry readings around the UK and the response from by mixed gay/straight audiences = especially young people - has always been very encouraging.

Now, sexuality is neither a conditioning process nor a deliberate lifestyle choice. Anyone with a grain of common sense realises that it has to be in the genes if only because it’s the only way to account for gay people world-wide from all manner of socio-cultural-religious backgrounds and persuasions.

Even if I were not gay I’m certain I’d have reached the same conclusion. There is nothing unnatural about being gay; on the contrary, it is but one among many to be found in nature’s mixed bag of blessings we call humanity.

Wherever we are stigmatised or demonised for being gay, you will find foolish, ignorant people so in love with the sound of their own voices that they have little or no understanding or respect for meaning. Fortunately, though, there will always be those among the heterosexual majority with a penchant for enlightenment and passion for humanity that will prevail, as it has for centuries, if not always when, as individuals, we need it most.  

LET THE MUSIC PLAY 

I creep up on you as time passes by;

you sense my presence but unsure

how or why it should make you feel

different from the way you thought

you were (as told) not so many years

before, when childhood games took

their cue from history, the mysteries

of adulthood waiting in the wings

for its mortal gamut to be run

I seize upon your senses as they wake

to the challenges of peer pressure,

parental expectations, private desires

lighting fires in the heart, ambition

conspiring with aspiration to indulge

the mind its appetite for a fate far better

than mapped out at school or around

the kitchen table. Yet, I too, am here

and you less able to suss me out?

I will pluck at your nerve strings until

you recognise the tune I play and let

it loose on heart, mind, body and soul

though (for a while at least) you share it

with no one, unsure how. Now, choose.

Play out the most beautiful song you will

ever hear or let me go, follow a safer

course, give ambition (or convention?)

a stronger, louder (better?) voice

Only, listen to the music and let it play,

this gene that says, “I’m gay.”

[From: Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]