Kiss and Tell (and the Spirit of Pride)

 

From Graham, close friend to Roger.

Perusing some of Roger’s older printed collections reveals recurring themes among his gay-interest poems. Those of alienation, loneliness and early attempts (however futile) to serve convention. Angst-ridden cries entreating with that stony-eared-gargoyle of society for acceptance. Allusions, perhaps, to Roger’s own experiences during his formative years. A dystopian era for LGBT+ people in the UK, when same-gender love was still regarded by many as an illness or a crime.*

The Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised intimacy between consenting adults in private.** Although a climate of fear remained. Roger would occasionally refer to past traumas where he suffered discrimination, bigotry and even violence which I’m reluctant to elaborate on.

There’s also references to reconciling sexuality with religious belief. Roger wasn’t particularly religious so I find this rather perplexing. I wish I’d asked him about it. Maybe the intention was to encourage readers with the idea that sexuality and faith needn’t be mutually exclusive?***.

This next poem, however, breaks completely free of the mould. An emboldened protagonist bursts forth like a rainbow-emblazoned butterfly from its cocoon. Liberated by love and brimming with bravado; seemingly embodying the spirit of Pride…

 

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KISS AND TELL

Your first kiss stripped my conscience bare
and reconstructed it, layer by finer layer

Your next kiss peeled away guilt of a Youth
that never quite came to terms with truth

More kisses instilled in me a peace of mind
my heart often warned I might never find

Other kisses showed me a brave new world
then took me there, its humanity revealed

Your mouth, it lit in me a bonfire of passion
reducing life’s agony to a smouldering ruin

Your kisses flood me with beautiful dreams
where nightmares once tore at life’s seams

Each kiss leaves my heart soaring like a dove;
where it sang the Blues, now it sings of love

Your kisses taste like rose-hip on my tongue,
our bodies, like petals, in spring’s arms flung

No kiss leaves me but yearning for another;
no matter the bigotry, we have each other

Your mouth teaches me even more each day
how to live and love, unashamed to be gay

 

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2014, from Tracking The Torchbearer.

 

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Notes

* An opinion poll commissioned by the Daily Mail (UK newspaper) in 1965 found that 36% of respondents believed homosexuality should remain classified as a crime. However, 93% agreed that homosexual men were ‘in need of medical or psychiatric treatment’. [How drastically attitudes have changed since then - although there’s no room for complacency.]

** Even following decriminalisation, police entrapment of gay men was still considered a worthwhile expenditure of public funds. [Effectively, state-sponsored morality police more befitting of a theocracy like Iran.] According to the Guardian newspaper, between 1967 and 2003, 30,000 gay and bisexual men were convicted for behaviour that would not have been a crime had their partner been a woman.

*** Disclaimer: the inherent ambiguity of Roger’s poems is that they’re not necessarily autobiographical. His use of narrative pronouns, i.e., ‘I’, ‘he’ ‘we’, ‘they’ and ‘us’, etc., can’t always be read as his own personal experiences. He leaves that open to the reader’s interpretation. In his kennings, for instance, abstract concepts like ‘forgiveness’ use the first person pronoun.