NB. Having published this post/poem this poem on the blog only a few days ago, I removed it after niggling reservations about the (original) tittle's persisted.
Now, I have
met Christians who insist it is ‘nothing personal’ that I will go to hell for
being gay, but ‘just a question of faith.’ I have also met Christians and those
of other faiths who take the view that if we all were created by a God of Love,
He is unlikely to make exceptions on such discriminatory grounds as
sexuality...or much else, for that matter. Oh, and yes, I have also met gay
Christians as well as gay men and women of other faiths, many of whom were cast
from the fold like demons. So what kind of religion is it that demonises people
for their sexuality?
Regular
readers know I do not subscribe to any religion, but take what I like to think
of as a strong sense of spirituality from nature. At the same time, I utterly
repudiate any suggestion that faith and sexuality are mutually exclusive. It
may interest some of you to know that I came to that conclusion at the age of
10 while attending Sunday School. If I had the faintest idea then that I am
gay, it was one for which I had neither the experience of life nor articulation
to even begin to formulate. Like all children,
though, I would overhear things. Rumour had it that a neighbour was a
homosexual. My mother was shocked when I asked her what the word meant and said
it was one that 'good' boys did not ask about. Naturally, I looked it up in my
dictionary.
Given that God created all humankind (as my Sunday School teachers would have me believe) it struck me as a grave injustice that anyone should be thought any less of simply for the way God had made them. This is probably why I felt no guilt when, at 14 years-old, I realised I am gay, and raged inwardly at everyone around me for years. (No one understood why, of course, or bothered to ask, so sure were they that their assumptions were correct, thereby missing the punch line altogether.)
Although
I often write poems in the first person, few are strictly autobiographical.
Even so, there are elements of autobiography in all my poems although
just where is left
for me to know and you to imagine…
F-A-T-E, GRAINS OF SAND or G-A-Y, TRUE GRIT
You were
leaving a church,
a Holy
Bible glued to one hand
as we
exchanged glances,
all sense
of body, mind and spirit
like
grains of sand descending
an hour
glass, delivering us a world
we barely
recognised as ours
You
hastened on your way.
all but
ran to the end of our street
while all
I could do was try
to forget
how you had affected me so,
scared
you suspected
my returning
a shy smile with a grin
exposed a
maturing sexuality
I barely
slept a wink all night
for
thinking of you, me, and an ‘us’
never
(surely?) any more then
than just
wishful thinking on my part
for fear
a secret I kept close
to this
lonely heart have its way,
and all
hell break loose
You
skipped school the next day.
(the
rumour was that you were sick)
and my
pulse kept racing
for
revisiting a subtly anxious glance
reflecting
my own hunger
for a
same sex relationship, love
but a
welcome bonus
I hadn’t
subscribed to ideas of fate
till
finding you by my side at the bell,
preparing
to head off
in the
same direction, a freak shower
demanding
our attention,
inviting
us to make a decision,
make a
mad dash for cover
Inevitably,
we were soon engaged
in the
kind of meaningless small talk
that
means everything,
reading
between lines and innuendos,
the
suggestion we be friends...
while
acknowledging so much more
without
having to find the words
We were
lovers but a short time,
(good
mates the rest of our lives)
killing
demon stereotypes,
exposing
a world of prejudices,
religious
dogma, bigotry...
as an
any-excuses-better-than-none
mindset
for abusing the rest of us
Copyright
R. N. Taber 2016
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