Flights of Tension to Fanciful Places

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

This poem remains in my general poetry blog archives for June 2015; it may not be one of my better poems, but it has a certain therapeutic value, for me at any rate. Many years ago, someone told me that the best cure for tension and stress is imagination. I had never thought of imagination as a form of creative therapy, but of course it is, and one of the best.

Oh, but haven’t we all been there at some time or another, past caring and simply wanting to shut the world out, slump in a comfortable armchair and forget about everything and everyone for a while …?

The trouble with slumping is that it has a nasty habit of temporarily removing life’s more attractive distractions from the inner eye and insisting it takes us down the darker side of Memory Lane, thereby making us feel even worse … which is where imagination comes in, and will  play its part
part to perfection ... if we but let it. We have but to close our eyes, think nice thoughts and let mind-body-spirit whisk us off to wherever it is we would rather be, and with whom ...

At the time I wrote this poem, I was in the early stages of recovering from and reflecting on a very bad cold when a good ‘slump’ is just about all I’d felt like doing. My cold all but forgotten, I was soon putting pen to paper ...

For many years, writing a poem has been my way of not letting a ‘slump’ get the better of me. The same can be said, if to a lesser degree, when writing fiction; while my novels have not been bestsellers, they have given me much pleasure, and feedback from my fiction blog/has been very encouraging. (Feel free to browse any time - for both my general and gay-interest fiction - at:  

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.com/

FLIGHTS OF TENSION TO FANCIFUL PLACES

Slump in a chair, thinking about life

and all the people I’ve known,

wondering where have they gone?

Slump in a chair, thinking about life

and all the things I have done,

wondering where I went wrong?

Slump in a chair, thinking about life

and choices made from the heart,

wondering where fear played a part?

Slump in a chair, thinking about life

and lovers who promised to stay

but left within hours of a night or day

Slump in a chair, thinking about life

and all the years wasted on regret

where I should have stood up to fate

Slump in a chair, thinking about life

and every epiphany I’ve known,

wondering where did I go so wrong?

Slump in a chair, thinking about life

and growing older, weaker,

for knowing I could have done better

Slump in a chair, thinking about death,

and all the people I’ve known,

wondering if there’s a hell or heaven?

  

Slump in a chair, watching television,

soaking up soap opera friends ,

lost the plot, left wondering how it ends

Slump in a chair, fret about being alone?

Not this time (slam on the brakes);

will get my life back, whatever it takes

Copyright R N. Taber 2008