Love, a Mind of its Own

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

Several readers have challenged this poem since it first appeared in my collection in 2004, and then on the blog in 2008. That no one challenges gay love these days seems to be the general view expressed here in the UK. What can I say except…don’t believe it!

Frequently, I wonder if some readers read a word I write. One told me only recently that I ‘should get real about the 21st century and stop living in the past.’ Oh, how I wish!

True, life can be better for gay people than it has ever been, here in the West at least, but not every gay man or woman, girl or boy has the good fortune to be living in a gay-friendly home/school/work environment. (Yes, even here in the UK where a Bill proposing gay marriage is being openly debated at Government level.)

If you are gay and from a socio-cultural-religious background that does not accept gay relationships ...well, it’s not easy to break away from all that. Some people choose not to break away at all. Fair enough, given that everyone’s priorities are different and we should all accept that. On the same principle, though, it is high time socio-cultural-religious groups who remain essentially homophobic learned to respect the rights of we gay people to live get on with our lives according to our natural instincts, not any religious dogma as imposed - or interpreted as being imposed - by Holy Books.

Yes, it’s easy enough for me to say, an openly gay man albeit still haunted by closet years that made no small contribution to a severe nervous breakdown in my mid 30’s. Even so, those of us who are comfortable about being openly gay should always remember that it’s not the same for everyone. We still have a long way to go before being gay is socially and culturally acceptable worldwide. Nor should I have to remind people like me that homophobia is very much alive and kicking in the so-called ‘liberal-minded’ West if increasingly less so than in other countries, especially where religion is used as a stick to beat free spirits into toeing its line, invariably by those who enjoy doing so for its own sake rather than out of any respect for human nature.

Love, thank goodness, is up for just about any challenge far too many among the world’s less enlightened minds continue to throw its way. Religion, for its part, does not have a monopoly on spirituality, nor can any dogma claim sole rights over the human spirit; the latter is an Open House. Wherever gay people feel as intimate a connection with any religion (as I do with nature) their conscience is clear; since no one but no one has the right to deny them access; as for any human thought processes that would, on human conscience be it.

LOVE, A MIND OF ITS OWN

Fingertips teasing

the spine, hearts skipping beats

twin balls tickling my own

between velvet thighs, tongues

creeping from mouths

anxious not to appear eager

for a parrying of wills

star-crossed lovers have braved

since the world began

Find free will alive
and kicking among like minds

as to who should love whom,

for Love has a mind of its own,
prone to inspiring the heart
to kinder choices than any forces

brought to bear on the ear,
or raised voices honed on holy books
by self-styled betters

The mind presuming
to know best, ever prioritising  

concerns of its own

in which it (invariably) has shares

reckons without self-taught
skills of lovers choosing to defy
any rules written in the first stones

denying equal rights to the heart,

be it straight or gay

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2019

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'A Challenge to Love' in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]