Saturday, 5 May 2012

Sometimes

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

Although I have been openly gay for many years, people still ask me if I am happy and if I have any regrets about being gay and therefore ‘deprived’ of a ‘normal’ life!

Well, I certainly don’t feel deprived, and what on earth is ‘normal’ anyway? Like most adjectives in any language, everyone one has their own take on it.

As for regrets and being happy...Well, yes, occasionally I wonder how my life might have been had I been born one of the heterosexual community’s own and let it dictate how I should live my life...but not often. 

Am I happy? Yes, I am happy in my own way although I dare say I’d have been a lot happier if there had been more ups and less downs throughout my life.  Yet, I suspect many if not most of us can say the much same regardless of colour, creed, sex or sexuality...

True, I miss having my love to keep me warm, but I have some dear friends, my poetry and nature to sustain me, and it is more than enough to keep me as happy as I suppose any of us can expect to be given the state of the world we live in.

SOMETIMES

Sometimes I regret being gay,
take long walks in the rain…
pausing now and then to ponder
puddles, wonder why I envy
the conventional person living
a conventional life in a two up,
two down, plagued by in-laws,
wife and 2.5 children

Sometimes I regret being gay,
take long walks by the canal…
pausing now and then to watch
geese flying high and free, just
as I yearn to be but feel trapped
in a cage where society would
have me stay though it dare not
give public voice to the thought
or risk being taken to court

Sometimes I regret being gay
take long walks on the heath…
pausing now and then to chat
with this and that person (some
gay, some not) about the weather,
global warming, War on Terror,
so much poverty in the world,
and how we should be glad - for
a fine day and the way we are

Sometimes, being gay is a burden
till, with you, I lay my body down

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




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