Coming Out, an LGBT Take on Existentialism

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

Today’s short poem provoked some hate mail when it appeared in the first volume of my Love And Human Remains (2001) along the lines that 'homosexuals have no claim to spirituality' but I tossed it the bin among other rubbish.

Religion does not have a monopoly on spirituality.

Invariably, it is not religion that is didactic and persists in being judgmental…but those who preach it. If these same people were to demonstrate more humanity and less desire to exert power and influence over every man, woman and child in the street, I might feel less despairing of the world’s religions. As it is, I love much of the music and architecture along with the spirituality of peace and love these often invoke.

It is the politics of religion that leaves me cold, not least because it is to blame for so much pain and suffering in the world. Fortunately, many people feel the same way and follow their religion more closely than they are given credit for by steering well clear of its politics.

Nor is it only gay men and women made to suffer by those who practice and/or preach their religion (and should know better). We have only to consider the world’s rising toll of HIV-AIDS victims and ask, where is the humanity in prohibiting the use of a condom? For that matter, what is the point of any religion without its humanity?

Me, I prefer to look for spiritual reassurance and strength in nature rather than in some ‘closed shop’ led by too many people supposedly in the business of saving souls, but for the greater part, inspired by the power buzz that particular chosen career gives them.

The poem was written in the 1980s when I was still getting over a severe nervous breakdown and only just starting to feel my way back into my sexuality and poetry again.

 COMING OUT, AN LGBT TAKE ON EXISTENTIALISM

Like a time-probe,

your tongue appropriates me;

I sink into your heat

burrowing dark centuries,

bearing

my loving cup

  penetrating

layer upon layer of bigotry;

till (finally)

kneeling at the altar

of our history,

I declare myself

Copyright R. N. Taber 1987; 2013

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'Coming Out' in Love And Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001.]