Ghosts, Touching Base

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

A Mormon missionary once told me I should never feel ashamed of being gay because it is a mental illness. “You’re no freak,” he insisted.  (How kind of him!)  “Think of it like this. The mentally ill cannot help themselves so they need to accept help to get better. There is no shame in that, and we can help you.” (The colleague accompanying him smiling and nodding encouragingly). When I asked him if he was qualified to help mentally ill people, he insisted that was not the point. “The point is…” he started to say.

“The point is,” I interrupted, “that people like you have to believe people like me are mentally ill because you can’t bear the thought that being gay is every bit as human as being straight. As a human being yourself that would put us on an equal footing, something no bigoted ego dares contemplate for fear of being exposed as a freak.”

Both men looked hurt and very uncomfortable. I left them to their thoughts.

Sadly, I have had many such conversations with people from all walks of life who always insist they are not homophobic and are perfectly willing to tolerate gay people.

Well, I have news for them. We LGBT folks deserve better than to be ‘tolerated’.

How I hate that word, tolerate… don’t you?

GHOSTS, TOUCHING BASE

Ghosts, in time and space,

mingling with crowds as blind

to their living presence

as parents to a gay son’s pain

in being made feel

a blot on the family landscape

for failing to live up

to the quintessential macho image

toeing the family line

Ghosts, in time and space,

whispering in cloth ears as deaf

to every word

as parents to a gay son’s pleas

to live and let live

without cocking an ear instead

to gossips and bigots

dead set on prescribing moral highs

to kill off home truths

Ghosts, in time and space,

straight out of the pages of history,

rummaging sound minds

for intelligent reasons why bigotry

has infiltrated religions

where peace and love have become

bywords for hypocrisy,

cherry picking life force principles

to accommodate dogma

Ghosts, in time and space,

whispering encouragement in my ear,

urging me not to care

what some people might have to say

about being gay, and less

of a person for that, given centuries

passing on inspiring tales

of LGBT folks around the world rising

above its prejudices

Ghosts, in time and space,

defying parameters of human nature,

the better to support

those whose natural instinctiveness

for love and peace remains

barracked by a world refusing to be honest

about any of this, convinced

by socio- cultural-religious dogma

that ‘real’ men never kiss

Copyright R. N. Taber 2018, 2020

[Note: An earlier version of this poem has appeared on the blog before under a different title; regular readers will be familiar with my revising earlier poems from time to time.]

A Common Humanity, the Authorised Biography

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

Another new poem today, prompted by mind-body-spirit yesterday.

If any good can be said to come out of this awful COVID-19 it is that more of us have a sense of our all being in he same proverbial boat, regardless of any socio-cultural religious or, yes, sexual persuasion. Hopefully once the pandemic has passed, bigotry will have taken a bad fall if not disappeared altogether. Well, hope springs eternal ...

Across the world, people are struggling to cope various social restrictions, often at the same time as mourning loved ones who have passed away before their time. All due credit to humanity for its remarkable stoicism in the face of tough times.

A neighbour recently lost her mother. When I sympathised, she commented that "She is better off out of all this. I miss her terribly, of course, but her spirit will never leave me so I guess I just have to live with and be thankful for that." True, indeed. As I often try to reassure readers in my poems and blog preambles, love never dies.

Meanwhile, each in his and her own way, we can but continues to do battle with COVID-19 and trust that, when all's said and done, humanity is bigger than it, and will not only endure but survive whatever it throws at us.

A COMMON HUMANITY, THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY 

Yesterday, already past tense,

having left its mark on us some way

or another, more elements

of memory likely to find us engaging

with such varying shades

of light and dark, colour, absences

of colour, and encounters

with such black and white images as preferably

glossed over by way of face-savings

Today, a sense of making the best

of times, enduring the worst, ever urging

mind-body-spirit to reflect 

on kinder, happier climes, lend illusion

all the colours of a rainbow

making promises it may (or may not) keep,

self-appointed Guardian of Hope

in sickness and in health, half-awake and asleep,

feeding mind-body-spirit raison d'être

Tomorrow, left foraging for crumbs

of comfort or even enjoying a hearty meal

where the cap (or metaphor) fits,

feeding human arts, nature, and archives

conclusions that may (or may not)

be grounded in fact, fiction or a predilection

on the part of human nature

to enter into such mind games as engineered by Time,

and passed off as history or philosophy

Call me Past-Present-Future, providing the diversity

that puts the ‘u’ and ‘y’ in a common humanity

Copyright R N Taber, 2020

[Note: this poem also appears on my general poetry blog today as feedback suggests a significant number of its reader "see no reason" to access this one.

L-I-F-E, Seasons in Time and (Personal) Space

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

Several LGBT readers have emailed to ask why I did not post the poem below on both blogs when it appeared on my general poetry blog yesterday.  Well, in the past, feedback has strongly suggested that many if not most LGBT readers only visit the gay poetry blog because they can directly relate to it.. In the past, I have published gay-interest poems on my general blog, but this has not proven very popular with anyone. A poem is a poem is a poems, of course just as a person is a person is a person .... whatever their socio-cultural-religious or sexual persuasion so ... hope you enjoy the poem.

Another  reader writes, how can you write poetry when the world is being devastated and left bereft by COVID-19? I am not sure if this is meant as criticism or compliment so will take it as both. Well, it isn’t easy, even at the best of times, to compose a poem that attempts to strike a balance between a celebration of nature and human nature while also acknowledging their flaws. 

Given that the Here-and-Now in the shape of COVID-19 is probably among the worst of times ever for many of us, the task has felt all but Herculean; it has taken several days of writing and rewriting to arrive at the poem below. Hopefully, most readers will get a sense of the spirit of optimism in which it was written, but as we all know, you can please some of the people some of the time but never all the people all the time …

Whatever, fingers crossed …

Yet another reader comments, “… it feels like we are heading for Armageddon.”  Well, I take his or her point, but beg to differ. I have had my fair share of ups and downs in life, and if the experience has taught me nothing else, it has shown me the power of positive thinking.

Never underestimate the human spirit, neither its natural resourcefulness nor its compassion; we may well find ourselves at the edge of some transcendental abyss from time to time, but the human spirit will always lend us the strength to resist diving into it if we can but touch base. Never easy, and sometimes we fail; it has worked, for me - albeit more subconsciously than consciously - more than once, but especially when I had a bad nervous breakdown in my early 30’s and attempted suicide.  (I will be 75 later this year.)

To date, I know of only one friend who has died of a COVID-19 related illness; we played together as children, lost touch for years and found each other again online a few years ago. Every death is a tragedy for family and friends left behind.  At the same time, I am reminded of something a teacher at my old school back in the 1950’s told the class: “Love and friendship never dies, not only for remaining a part of us all our lives, but also for that part of them in us being passed on in ways and to people we may never know … and so it goes on. A university lecturer would later refer to it as a posthumous consciousness to which, as regular readers will know, I often make reference in my blogs and poems.

Remembrance is no compensation for loss, but I have always found it a great comfort to sense that no one’s life has ever been in vain; we all make a positive contribution even if we don’t always realise it. [Some readers may get a greater sense of my mindset from my reading of my poem,  ‘The Enchanted Wood’ @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGCv54LM4yo  - among other videos/ readings on my You Tube channel.  

I am not a religious person, and consider myself a pantheist; nor do I believe that religion has a monopoly on spirituality. In the sense that I try to give the human spirit a voice in my poems, hopefully they express something of a sense of spirituality with which I invariably engage as I write them.

Wishing you all love and peace, whoever and wherever you are in the world,

Hugs,

Roger

L-I-F-E, SEASONS IN TIME AND PERSONAL SPACE

Spring comes, offering all nature

and human nature a time to nurture

and flower, making such promises

as it craves will see our lives spread joy

on our graves

Summer comes, offering all nature

and human nature a time to give senses

their head, deck humanity with love

and peace, see any living nemeses left

for dead

Autumn comes, reworking all nature

by winds and rain enough to blow away

its debris, imploring mind-body-spirit

remain free before winter dares impose

captivity

Winter comes, nature, so eerily quiet

but for redbreast, forever making the best

of the worst, coaxing the human heart

into the Spirit of Stoicism, living metaphor

for its heroism 

Nature and human nature, deserving

a time to come, go, rest, and come again

in light and dark, each in its turn,

a measure of life and death, come ultimate

Harvest Home

Copyright R N. Taber, 2020

L-I-F-E, Lessons for the Learning

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

There can be no greater gift parents can give their children than encourage them to develop a strong sense of personal identity, including sexual identity, and love them all the more for it. (There is no reason for personal/sexual identity to be at odds with any socio-cultural-religious concerns if only the latter were inclined to be less intransigent.)

No parent should expect to live the life they may have missed out on through their children. While this may be understandable in the sense that some parents want more for their children than they had when they were young, I have seen too many parents overstep the mark in their misplaced enthusiasm to recapture lost opportunities. Children and young people need guidance, of course, but there is a big difference between guidance and manipulation. We all need to  develop a sense of discernment that encourages us to make our own choices. Yes, mistakes will be made, that's par for the course from birth to grave.

My father was often heard to comment  about many things that ‘It’s all a game of bluff.’As I have grown old, I often finding myself saying much the same. As for who is bluffing whom, now that's the million dollar question to which many if not most of us can expect to spend a lifetime trying to decide.

Life is, indeed, the making of us, from the first steps we take to our last; full of opportunities taken, rejected or missed altogether, no one to praise or blame for how we turn out but the inner self that sees all, no place to hide.

Whatever our socio-cultural-religious background, we need to respect each other's differences; above all, we need to learn that those same differences do not make us different, only human. The latter, especially is a lesson that's never too early or too late for the learning.

L-I-F-E, LESSONS FOR THE LEARNING

A child is born

who needs must learn about life,

and signs pointing

to survival in a game that goes
by many names,
among them chance and bluff
where skill sidelined

A child is born

who needs must learn about trust,

and how to discern

where hypocrisy dares infiltrate

a humankind as likely to sail
under false colours as it is to play
honest broker

A child is born

who needs must learn that giving

is a finer art

than receiving, compassion

no sign of weakness,
but demonstrating true strength
of character

A child is born

who needs must learn how to lean

on others besides
lending a helping hand
from time to time,
no shame in asking, but sure proof
of maturity

A child is born

who needs must learn how lying

costs more than honesty,
more often than not leaving

a human heart
near bankrupt if forced to keep up
appearances

A child is born

who needs must learn how neither

our stars nor betters

are ultimately responsible for us,

only ourselves,

as we, in turn, needs must look out

for each other

A child is born

who needs must discover that love

comes in all shapes

and forms, and to recognise them

for mind-body-spirit
intent upon a heart to heart with us,
and listen

A child is born

who needs must learn one lesson

above all else,
that we are as we are, with minds
and hearts of our own,
no winner or loser in someone else's
life games

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2020

[Note: This poem first appeared on the blog some years ago under the title 'A Child is Born.']

C'est la Vie

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

The COVID-19 pandemic is at or nearing its peak here in the UK. Social distancing is of paramount importance if we are to slow the spread of the virus and eventually defeat it. It doesn't take a coronavirus to bring social distancing into play, though, as LGBT folks are as well aware as anyone, if not more so ...

While I am complying with social distancing at the moment, fond memories of times past helps to ease a growing sense of isolation .... and keep me sane as this mad, mad, mad world of ours continues to send mixed messages to a diverse population. 

"In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life; it goes on." - Robert Frost 

C'EST LA VIE

I got chatting

to a guy at a nightclub bar,

happened to mention

in the course of conversation

that I’m gay

to which he said he needed

a pee, left the bar stool,

turned his back on me, walked away,

(never saw him again …)

I got chatting

to a guy at a soccer club bar

discussing our team’s

chances of promotion, given

a promising season,

agreeing it stood to reason;

he asked if my girlfriend

liked the game, to which I said I’m gay,

(end of conversation …)

I got chatting

to a macho guy in a bus queue,

wondering if ours

would ever come as we’d stood there

a good half an hour;

it was getting late. Do you have date,

he asked with a grin?

I answered, “No, and by the way, I’m gay,”

(expecting confrontation …)

“Me neither,” grin broader, “so, fancy a beer?”

Bus came, passed us walking on together

Copyright R. N. Taber (2020)]

(London, UK, Good Friday.)

[Note: I wasn't happy with the original title, and feedback suggests that neither were many readers, although most enjoyed the poem. Many thanks, therefore to the reader who suggested a simple but appropriate replacement.]

Autobiography of a Light Bulb

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

Today's poem first appeared on my general poetry blog in 2010. A reader, Marc, who admits "I don't visit your other poetry blog often enough, especially as your poems and comments there are often support of gay people worldwide. Yesterday, I did, and discovered 'Autobiography of a Light Bulb'.Do put this on the gay blog please, I loved it, and am sure my gay brothers and sisters around the world will too." Well, many thanks for that, Martin. Hopefully, more gay readers will enjoy the poem. [It is always hard to choose which poems to publish on which blogs; a poem is a poem is a poem just as a person is a person is a person ... but it would be pretty boring for readers if I put the same poem of both blogs all the time, yeah?]

Now,people often tell me they have a feeling for poetry and would love to write a poem but never seem to find inspiration. Well, look around you. As I have often said, you can write a poem on just about anything,  I have written poems about tables, chairs, even puddles...

A reader once challenged me on this.He contacted me to suggest I could not write a poem about a light bulb.

Never let it be said I’d duck such a challenge.

Too many of us, I suspect, remain in the dark about so many things, including ourselves, but it is never too late to switch on, and take a good look; thereby lies the path to discernment and understanding...of ourselves, others too.We may be a diverse human race, but no one person in or facet of it has a monopoly on the human spirit; it is common to us all if less common is how, when or whether we ever choose to acknowledge and address it.

[Image taken from the Internet]

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A LIGHT BULB

I have coloured the cheeks of a child
at a birthday party

I have seen quarrels turn into beatings
and draw blood

I have watched over students yawning
for trying to concentrate

I have watched over meetings ringing
with raised voices

I have followed the progress of lovers
with delight

I am privy to secrets a journalist would
die for

I have been amused by such melodrama
as politicians love to stage

I have been moved by a significant few
brokering for peace

I become incensed by folks playing safe
for a quiet life

I despair of clerics reworking scriptures
to exonerate themselves

I empathise with poets transcending light
to justify darkness

Yet, party as I am to the whole sorry mess,
at least I can switch off

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

G-A-Y, Flowers of the Field

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

[Update. April 1st 2020]: The coronavirus, COVID 19, is spreading worldwide and various governments feel obliged to take various emergency measures; it all smacks of Big Brother to me although needs must we act responsibly and conform to a whole new socio-cultural-political mindset.

Whatever, let's stay calm folks, use our common sense, trust our basic survival instincts and we will get though what appears to be the worst global crisis since the second world war. Remember that thousands of people die of flu every year; while this corona virus appears to be far more serious than an outbreak of influenza, we all need to stay positive and help each other as best we can. The sick and elderly, are as always, the most vulnerable among us so we especially need to rally on their behalf, even if it means getting to know neighbours who are all but strangers. 

Me? I will be 75 later this year and have been living with prostate cancer since 2011. I live alone, but will stay in touch with friends by phone if mobility becomes severely restricted by any temporary legislation. Meanwhile, I continue to take each day as it comes, and hope for the best...] RNT

Meanwhile...

Whatever our ethnicity, creed, gender or sexuality, it is the same for all lovers and would-be lovers everywhere; if falling out is like a power cut, making up - or (finally) getting together for the first time - has all the natural thrills of an electric storm...

Nothing about love is unnatural, and that applies to LGBT lovers too; never let anyone tell or persuade you differently. Nor is the spiritual nature of love any less for LGBT couples; various socio-cultural-religious dogma may well argue differently, but be sure it is the human spirit in us all that will have the last word.

G-A-Y, FLOWERS OF THE FIELD

We were arguing,

(I forget why) and I stumbled,

fell into your arms,

struck by a sudden electric storm,

your lips, moist and warm

on mine, feisty red-hot tongue

prising them apart,

paralysing every muscle,

my heart folding in

on its epicentre like petals  

under siege

We broke away,

appalled by what we thought

we could see in our faces;

rage, fear, pain… like flashes

of lightning,

a hard rain falling like the tears

of old gods, home truths

lashing out at us like the wind

dragging vulnerable leaves

from brave trees as ever it pleases,

nature teases

We stared at each other,

wide-eyed creatures, less afraid

we’ll come to harm

than a situation caught us out;

no time to duck and dive,

but…a coming alive

in the throes of lightning flashes,

closing in on each other

by way of acknowledging

heavens above taking our part,

nurturing the earth

Storm over, fragile hearts opening

like flowers for the nurturing

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; rev. 2020

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]