Tuesday, 9 July 2013

Where Unicorns Roam


Firstly, many thanks go to those readers who send comments. I never publish comments, but read them all. Please remember that if you would like me to reply, send an email to the usual (above) address. Many comments are not genuine and include spam links that can spread viruses; others are just links to advertising. I did not want to be accused of publishing only the good comments so decided at the outset that I would publish none at all. Quite a few readers email me, though, and I have struck up some great email exchanges since starting the blogs and made wonderful new friends worldwide. Occasionally, some of these have visited London and we have met up to put the world to rights over a few beers or a meal. It has been a lovely way to meet people.

Meanwhile…

Now, several readers have asked where they can buy the novels serialized on my fiction blog. Many thanks for asking, but after a good many false starts, I gave up trying to interest literary agents or publishers and decided to post all my unpublished works on the blog rather than have them doing nothing and going nowhere on my computer. It is my intention to publish them as e-books (along with 2nd (revised) editions of my poetry collections) at a later date. Meanwhile, anyone is welcome to dip into the fiction blog and see if there is a storyline that catches their interest.  Staying on top of various health problems make such demands on my time these days that I’m afraid I have yet (if ever) to finish writing Redemption, Book 3 of what was intended as a gay-interest crime trilogy, Blasphemy-Sacrilege-Redemption.


Meanwhile...

It has been my experience that homophobes are often more angry with themselves than with the gay people they profess to deplore. More than once, when I was sexually active, I enjoyed close encounters with guys who had a great line in chat-up, but whose conversation on parting would go something like this:

HE (apologetically) I just can’t live that way, end of story. I’m getting married to a great girl who loves me to bits, What’s more, she’ll be a great wife and mother and an asset to my career.

ME (wryly) If you don’t mind my saying so, you have a very cold blooded attitude for such a hot blooded guy.

HE (shrugs) That’s life...

I never knew whether to laugh or cry.

Now, I personally know several guys who are openly homophobic and privately visit gay cruising areas. [Well, not as openly now that political correctness has driven so much bigotry behind closed doors.] How do I know? Because I have a gay friend who also visits those same places. One day someone may well ‘out’ them, but it won’t be me or my friend if only because how they live their lives is none of our business any more than how we live our lives is any of theirs.

True, I have met married men (and women) who love their partners and children to bits and see no harm in same close encounters of the sexual kind on the side, and I’m not a judgmental person. Even so, I have to say it smacks of betrayal to me. During my youth and early manhood, I had to keep my sexuality a secret from family and friends. Living that lie nearly killed me. As it was, as regular readers know, it culminated in a severe nervous breakdown in my early 30s during which I attempted suicide.

Maybe if more bisexual or essentially gay men and women were to confide in their opposite sex partners from the start, there would be less heartbreak all round? I have met such couples, and it never ceases to amaze me just how much love is prepared to take in its stride.

Without honesty, though, what chance does even love have? I often wonder how many of us live in something of a fantasy world and half expect to encounter a unicorn around the next street corner ...

WHERE UNICORNS ROAM 

His body relaxed,
the tip of his tongue stroking my lips
as we made love,
exploring, adoring, each other’s bodies,
oh, so tenderly at the start
then letting rip with pent-up passions
of the heart

It was our first time
and he gave no hint it would be our last
as we made love
in a manner that was sheer poetry,
desire in perfect rhythm,
naked flesh feeding on the pleasures
of wet dreams

We became as one,
riding a feisty unicorn over leafy meadows,
majestic mountains,
to lush, heather-scented slopes
leading to the sea
where we lay, spent, on a sandy shore
content in its embrace

I stroked his hair
where its flames but flickered in the hearth
he had made of my heart
and I longed to rouse his heat in me
again, again, again…
even as each wild, exquisite flame died,
one by one


He stirred, kissed me
till my mouth felt bruised by the intensity
of that long goodbye,
though not as I sensed he'd have it be
but much the same as I,
lying in sun-kissed sand, as if love meant us
to be together

That kiss was magic, its spell cruelly broken,
his mind bent on marrying a woman


Copyright R. N. Taber 2010


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