Monday, 15 September 2014

All or Nothing


 “You’re a fool!’ someone told me forcefully years ago when I came out to everyone as a gay man, adding for good measure that ‘All gays are losers.’

Well, all I can say is that now I know why ‘fools rush in’ and I certainly don’t feel I’ve lost out. On the contrary, in spite of my life’s many ups and downs, I feel all the more fulfilled for being openly gay. Tragically, many gay boys and girls, men and women living in a gay-unfriendly culture and/or environment may still feel unable to do so.

If it is true that love makes fools of us all, then what better way to survive this mad, mad, mad, world of ours...? Besides, we are the sum of all our parts, and as I discovered very early in my teens, we are all or we are nothing; during subsequent years spent in a closet, I came to understand that only too well...

 ALL OR NOTHING 

Who says gay love is fool’s gold
has never mined craters of the moon
or lain with another as naked as the day
they were born

Who says gay love is fool’s gold
will never have slid helter-skelter
on the Milky Way into the loving arms
of Earth Mother

Who says gay love is fool’s gold
may well have admired a lovely rose
in its season, but what of other flowers
other seasons...?

Who says gay love is fool’s gold
will always reach for reality’s sword,
forgetting that live craters of the moon
are not of this world

Who says gay love is fool’s gold
sees history’s notes on stereotypes
as a convenient excuse for more blots
in their copybooks

Who says any love is fool’s gold
has never mined craters of the moon
or lain with another, as naked as the day
they were born

Copyright R. N. Taber 2009


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