Challenging the Status Quo

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

Among other things, the Olympic Games bring people together, athletes and spectators alike, from all walks of life regardless of colour, creed, sex or sexuality...which has to be a GOOD thing for all of us whether we are sports mad or not.

This poem is a kenning. I wrote it on my late partner’s birthday; we were only together a few years, but I cherish the memory of our love and some great times together.

Love is a fine pacemaker; pair it with pain and we are well-equipped to run the gamut of this sorry world’s testing times and places.

May the collective spirit of the Olympic Games endure for London 2012 and across the world long, long afterwards... [Oh, and wouldn't be great if more gay sportsmen and women set a good example and came out for us all?]

We gay people may be a relative minority, but we are a very significant (and growing) minority;we continue to help set the pace for change in societies and communities where, for far too long, socio-cultural-religious conventions have turned blind eyes and deaf ears.

CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

I am a cry in the night,

world cocking but half an ear

to heads like waves
on a feisty sea of pillows

in need of laundering

come morning if only to hide

tell-tale patches
of grief, guilt, loss of face

or worse ...

I am tears in the rain

no one able to tell I am crying,
no matter a part of me

is dying for want of showing
a kinder side than seen

by those who have no pity

for the likes of a cry

in the night or tears in the rain

soon forgotten

I am shadows in twilight,

made to witness darker deeds
than any God imagined

or else He (or She) would never

have laid life on me

but left me to pass like a dream

across time and space,

no cries or tears or fretting

about losing face

I am the voice of the human heart,
call me Mind-Body-Spirit

Copyright R N Taber 2012. 2019

[Note; An earlier version of this poem appears in Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]