That Sweet Bondage

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

We all experience degrees of loss, despair and disappointment as we progress through life; many have more than their fair share of all three.  Yet, life goes on and we have to move on with it or let our emotions leave us dragging behind. I have known people who have succumbed to the latter and become very resentful and bitter individuals. While there is no easy route to ‘getting on with life despite everything…’ we all need to find one that is at lease manageable. It will often require courage, determination, and a LOT of positive thinking.

Most of all, we need to rediscover hope, and reinvent ourselves along the way.

When a love affair ends because two people fall out of love with each other...well, it happens and moving on isn't too difficult. Even so, when both partners love each other but one partner wants to tell family, friends and just about everyone while the other - for whatever reason - doesn't...well, that's a really tough one. There's a lot to be said for staying in a closet relationship if two people truly love each other; easier, though, when neither person feels he or she has a choice. The alternative scenario, though, will more likely than not prove too much to bear.  Moving on may well be a necessity but so, too, is the fact that love never dies...however much it may make us feel better to think otherwise.

I have been on both sides of that particular divide. I had realised I am gay by the time I was 14 years-old. To my shame and regret, though, I didn't have the guts to tell the world I'm gay for a good 25 years; I moved around a lot, was in/out of the damn closet like a jack-in-the-box, and only ever told a few people at a time. Once I'd finally come out to the world and stayed out, I couldn't face going back again. True love - gay or straight -  will find its way even if it does mean the heart's having to give the head a good talking to before it will listen.

Big Brother 'Society' would have us all toe whatever line its 'betters' set out for us; thankfully, human nature is bigger and better than that; many socio-cultural-religious conventions have their place of course, but we are none of us in bondage to them, and any break-away ethic, including LGBT, also deserves respect and recognition. Love, in all its shapes and forms, is the ultimate human bondage from which an all-inclusive humankind will never seek to escape whatever our ethnicity, creed or sexuality.

‘That sweet bondage which is freedom’s self.’- Percy Bysshe Shelley.’ [Queen Mab, Canto 9]

THAT SWEET BONDAGE

Came a time, ties that bind

lay broken, the last star snuffed out,

harsh words spoken in anger

stubbornly refusing to be put to rout

by an army of emotions

demanding I stay, put things right

where (without meaning to)

I’d said only what was right for me,

all but forgetting you

Came a time, ties that bind

lay as corpses under the same sheets

where we'd come together,

planning our future, listening out

for a dawn chorus

we never really heard for words

spilled on my pillow

from lips kissing me, oh, so tenderly

but couldn't say, "I love you."

Came a time, ties that bind

ran barefoot into a low, misty dawn

without care or thought

for their salvation, crushing them

among dead grasshoppers

in a frenzy of shamed retreat after

hearing you answer, ‘No way!’

to letting the world in on the secret

that we two are gay

Ah, yes, but ties that bind

once broken can yet be repaired

with the patience of saints

brought to lovers the world over

since time began

by those called in with a will to craft

their reconstruction

with love's finer skills handed down,

generation to generation

Came a time, ties that bind

discovered we could not exist apart,

each needing to hear a heartbeat

other than our own for life to mean life

rather than pretending

at living for failing to let the world

know we are gay,

and you, too, found the words I need

to hear you say

Let the world try to break us as it will,

the ties that bind, they bind us still

Copyright R. N. Taber 2020