A Walk in the Park

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

“We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.” - Deepak Chopra

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” - Khalil Gibran

“We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.” William Hazlitt

“Forever is composed of Nows.” – Emily Dickinson

Even as a child, I loved being at the heart of nature, not only for its surrounding, but also for the responses to it by mind-body-spirit, communicating sounds and poetry it would be years before I would even begin to define it as a sense of spirituality; years, too, before I felt able to go public with it through poetry. 

As my dear mother used to say, learning curves are not confined to the classroom...

A WALK IN THE PARK

Taking a long walk
in the park, sky many shades
in many moods,
spots of rain urging me pause
by a favourite tree
playing host to feathered friends
bidding me see-hear-listen,
let the indomitable Spirit of Nature
address past-present-future

Becoming more aware
of a Here-and-Now beyond 
rain and cloudy skies,
a part of me opening up, not only
to what it could see
but to feelings, asking questions
of heart-and-soul
it had not thought of asking,
confused by worldly turns of thought,
all but become a habit

Life is for all, no exceptions,
though we are sometimes made 
to feel we don’t deserve
a voice, simply for nurturing
visions of self-identity 
considered ill-suited to this society,
or that community,
for fear of any bullying powers that be;
none so blind as will not see 

Having listened to all the tree
had to say by way of putting lyrics
to the music in my head,
heart-and-soul's reawakened,
already reworking
its approach to everyday living,
less of simply tagging along 
for the ride, up for restating its position;
such is...the art of being human

Ah, but time to go home, hopefully share
all I have yet to make sense of here...

Copyright R. N. Taber (2023)

[Note: This post-poem also appears on my general poetry blog today.] RT

Past-Present-Future, Our Call

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

While I don’t believe we (quite) make our own luck or bad luck, I have come to have a sense of mind-body-spirit’s directing it. 

As regular readers know, I had planned to qualify as a librarian after leaving school in January 1964 (after re-taking and re-failing an A-level.) Unable to take up my place at Library School, I drifted for a good 7 years with no real sense of direction. 

Looking back, though, I may have lost heart, and mind-body-spirit may well aided and abetted my drifting, we never lost sight of what or who I wanted to be. I went into free fall after freefall, made mistake after mistake, but even in the course of these, I never quite lost sight of my original aims in life -to be a librarian and find the confidence to look the world in the eye as a gay man.   

My hearing problem (perceptive deafness) means I often have communication problems in group situations; apart from a love of literature, I am essentially a ‘people’ person so public library work was always the obvious choice of career as it involves a lot of 1-1 information work with which I am (far) more comfortable and can cope (far) more effectively. As for being gay, mind-body-spirit was working on that issue too. 

Yes, I got there in the end and many would say it was more by luck than good judgement. It may sound whimsical, but I suspect mind-body-spirit knew best. Yes, it took me a longer to qualify as a librarian, and I did not leave the proverbial ‘closet’ until my 30’s, but those dark years of drifting like a lost soul in a worldly wilderness gave me a greater understanding of personal crises and (hopefully) has made me a better poet. Although I have always loved writing poetry, I never realised just how much a part of me the poet in me really is until I was much older. 

So, luck, bad luck...up to a point we make our own, but if we never (quite) lose our sense of direction in life... well, yes, I suspect mind-body-spirit will continue to guide us through thick and thin if we but keep faith with it, and let it do just that. 

PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE, OUR CALL 

Like leaves on a feisty breeze,
the baffled consciousness travels
a puzzled world’s wondering
just what’s what about governmental
decisions, as likely as not to leave us
asking more questions, if only for mulling
what-might-have-been but for pecuniary pies
in various (potential) answers 

Like blossom on a feisty breeze,
the hopeful consciousness travels
as freely as any scepticism
regarding electoral cat-and-mouse games
as likely as not to be interrupted
by as an innate a cynicism as parental calls
for us to participate in home rituals reaffirming
their knowing what’s ‘best’ for us 

Like roots in a feisty breeze
an enduring consciousness travels
time and (personal) space...
coming to rest more by nature’s whim
than any pre-ordained design
yet returning to the earth from whence it came,
perchance to rebirth itself, with the good earth onside
to make reparation, earn forgiveness? 

Chance may well be a fine thing, once it can see  
just who-what-where in life we need to be 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2021

[Note: this post-poem appears on both poetry blogs today.] RNT

Stereotypes, Daggers in the Heart

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

This poem first appeared on the blog in 2016.

I am not happy with the new blogger and wasn't when I was invited to try it some time ago. I had hoped we bloggers might  be given a choice  to continue in the old format, but it appears not, so I may not be blogging here for much longer. It is typical - in my personal experience - that so many people and organizations, even some shops, give little thought to how many older people like myself  - who do not have i-phones or android and struggle with internet technology, are easily confused, especially those of us living alone and have been struggling with other health issues long before the Covid-19 pandemic. However, I will see how I get on with the new format, but am not optimistic.

I am often asked to repeat the link to my informal poetry reading on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square as my contribution to Sir Antony Gormley's One and Other 'live' sculpture' project in 2009. The entire web stream of 2400 hours is archived in the British Library:

.

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223121732/oneandother.co.uk/participants/Roger_T  [ [NB: The British Library have confirmed that the video is no longer available as it was incompatible with a new IT system. However, it still exists and BL hope to reinstate it and make it available to the public again at some future date.] RNT

To suggest all gay men are paedophiles is every bit as absurd as it is to suggest everyone from any one socio-cultural-religious group is a terrorist. Tragically, stereotypes have a nasty habit of spreading and some people start mistaking them for truths which they duly pass on ...

I was only 14 years-old when I realised I am gay. Men I encountered at local gay cruising grounds were no paedophiles; on the contrary, they taught me how to think better of myself after being raised to think homosexuality is shameful. I did not feel able to come out to the world as a gay man for some years, not least because same sex relationships were illegal here in the UK until 1969; neither was I able to quite shake off the hostility I had met towards those like myself until much later, but thanks to those early encounters I was eventually encouraged to do so.  

The less enlightened among the heterosexual majority tend to forget that gay boys and girls, too, need to learn about sexual relationships; it is vital that sexual/ gender identity issues are discussed openly and intelligently in schools everywhere - including Faith Schools - so that children do not grow up with false, if not warped impressions, of what it means to be gay, bisexual, transgender or simply confused, even frightened by the way they start to identify with their sexuality as their teenage years kick in.. 

Sadly, various socio-cultural-religious agendas do no one who is not a diehard heterosexual any favours; consequently, even in a supposedly 'enlightened' twenty-first century, there are LGBT folks around the world, from all walks of life, forced to live their lives in the shadows or - worse - some dark lonely closet, such as I once did for years.

STEREOTYPES, DAGGERS IN THE HEART 

I’ll be your friend a child told an old man,

but he shook his grey head, sighing;

the child took careworn hands in his own,

sad to see already rheumy eyes crying

I’d love to be your friend said the old man

but some people will get the wrong idea;

they’ll be looking at you and looking at me,

and feeding old lies to imagination, I fear

It’s time I was on my way said the old man,

I’ve been warming this bench too long.

"Go child, and have fun, as much as you can,

it doesn’t last, innocence, being young…"

The child ran off, puzzled by catching Gran

throw daggers at the kindly, lonely old man

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2016

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber. 2005.]

Spirit of Autumn

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

Today's poem first appeared on the blog in 2014. 

I will be publishing fewer posts/poems on the blogs for some time while I concentrate on updating previous editions of my collections and preparing a new one. Again, I will Having been unable to interest any publishers/ agents in a mix of general and gay -interest poems, I will probably self-publish the latter but only have 200 or so copies printed; new editions of previous collections will only be available online and I will le everyone know when they are available to be uploaded. 

People often tell me they find autumn a sad month because it means winter is closing in, but as I have often pointed out on my blogs… after winter, spring.

Better, surely, to look forward to spring than dread winter? 

In the meantime, let us enjoy autumn for all its glorious colours and the sense of eternal optimism these are surely meant to inspire in us, an optimism that well may fail us from time to time...but, as my late mother once said, there is an eternal springtime of the loving, hopeful heart sure to inspire and help us through all the seasons of life, even the hardest of its winters...if we will but keep faith with it. When I pointed out that I was not a religious person, she simply responded to the effect that no religion has a monopoly on love and hope since we are all born with a potential capacity for both. How far we choose to apply it, she would argue, has more to do with human nature than religion. (My mother was a Christian, but like all the more remarkable religious-minded people, whatever their religion, she closed her heart and mind to no one.)

SPIRIT OF AUTUMN

Autumn leaves ...

Drifting by my window

like dreams I have nurtured

with love and care

in the garden of my life

where some flowered

in their season while others

were battered by wind and rain,

never to be seen again

Autumn leaves ...

Whirling by my window

like dervishes in a frenzied

dance of life and death,

sustained by a rage to seize

the day, come what may,

on the battlefields of my life

where I have risked all to prove

a born capacity for love

Autumn leaves ...

Clinging to my window

as Apollo clings to the last patch

of blue before sunset,

bids nature and human nature

rest easy on hard won laurels,

so-brief enough reprieve before

more rude awakenings to a world

falling on its sword

Autumn leaves ...

Ripped from my window

like pages of memory best left

to whims of wind and rain

while I enjoy each dreamy leaf,

petal and blade of grass

found in the garden of my life

whose choirs heard singing each day

of my pride in being gay

Autumn leaves, tears of Earth Mother

for any that cannot see beyond winter

Copyright R. N. Taber 2014; 2020

[Note: This post-poem also appears on my general blog today] RNT

In the Blood

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

 

Today’s poem-post first appeared on the blog in 2016; it has since been (slightly) revised and given a new title.

 

What do you do if you’re gay and belong to a culture that is intrinsically homophobic?  This poem is based on a heart-warming conversation I once had with a gay Muslim man and his straight boyhood friend.

 

It is good to know that platonic love is still alive and kicking even in the face of the kind of socio-cultural-religious homophobia that has plagued us for centuries, and will continue to do so until LGBT issues are discussed in the classroom, opinions invited, compared and subsequently taken on board so that young people grow up familiar with the ultimate Fact of Life in so far as our differences do not make us different, only human; like it or not, we are all part of a common humanity and there  is no excuse for prejudice. As for those who object to their children having an all-round education on any socio-cultural-religious grounds, children are not fools nor do they deserve to be treated as such; better, surely, that they learn to respect human differences than be spoon fed bigotry and hate?

 

Yes, of course it matters what people think of us, but what matters far more is what we think of ourselves. Whatever our religious or non-religious views, we only have one life as we know it now, and it is our life no one else's.  Is it really so selfish to live it the way we want to live it, especially when love is our guiding light...and loving one person doesn't mean we need to leave anyone else behind... unless their take on love happens to be set in tablets of stone, in which case, so be it, their choice.

 

Many gay people are raised (as I was) to think the worst of the whole LGBT ethos so when they begin to personally relate to that same ethos themselves, they experience a crisis of conscience,never easy to deal with, and some of us never do. I did, but not after some very painful times with family and (some) friends. It took a nervous breakdown in my early 30's before I found the self-confidence to trust my own instincts and hold my head high for being gay. To my shame and regret, I even rejected a good friend for being gay during those early, fearful years. In my 70's now, I have tried to compensate for being such a coward then, but my closet days, they haunt me still.

 

No one chooses an LGBT orientation; we identify with it or we don't. Either way, the choice lies in what (if anything) we do about it.  Those who continue to oppose and demonstrate against LGBT issues amongst others on any school curriculum need to ask themselves if anyone has the right to deny anyone else the right to be themselves... and give due consideration to what Education is all about.

 

G-A-Y, IN THE BLOOD 

 

Out walking in the park,

saw someone who looked like you

pause to watch clouds drift by

like fluffy bits of snow, nowhere

to go and nothing better to do

than haunt us with memories, good

bad, happy, sad, and needing

to be saved to a desktop or lost

in that system commonly known

as the human condition

 

Out walking in the park,

someone who looked just like me

came right up to a friend,

wanting to know where he stood

on life, love, humanity,

‘taboo stuff’ like sexual identity…

and why shun a best mate

for being true to conscience,

before socio-cultural-religious ideas

that put people in boxes?

 

Out walking in the park,

someone who looked just like me

spoke up for being gay,

could understand concerns

about gossip and guilt

by association (yes, only too well)

but still had no regrets

about telling everyone his secret

about being buried alive in a closet,

body, mind and spirit

 

Out walking in the park,

on a day when a hostile gathering

of clouds were never inclined

to take my side, I failed miserably

in helping you come to terms

with my world, the likes of which

someone just like you

could not see was but an extension

of the friendship we had both known

since we were children

 

What happened, I wondered

to the best friend I'd looked up to

and adored for years,

as my eyes misted over with tears

for times shared, innocence lost,

doubting (then) he'd ever understand,

sharing his visible pain already,

a hard rain falling as if to obliterate

any tears as we went our separate ways

into the same sad world?

 

Out walking in the park,

saw someone who looked like you

pause to watch clouds drift by

like fluffy bits of snow, nowhere

to go and nothing better to do

than haunt us with memories, good

bad, happy, sad, and saved

to the desktop for posterity or deleted

by socio-cultural-religious interpretations

of what passes for humanity

 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2016; 2020

 

[Note: The title is taken from an interview given by James Baldwin to mark the 15th anniversary of Stonewall; it is about being gay in America, but sadly still rings true among families/ communities worldwide: https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/06/22/james-baldwin-on-being-gay-in-america/ ]

 

 

Dog Roses OR N-a-t-u-r-e, (All- Inclusive) Life forces)

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

Today's poem first appeared on the blogs (in a slightly different form) in 2013.It was not long, though, before I deleted it from my general blog after a lot of abusive emails, but have re-posted it on both blogs today albeit slightly revised.(Feedback continues to suggest that few gay readers dip into both blogs.)

In the language of flowers, dog roses mean pleasure mixed with pain.

It was after writing today’s poem in 1991 that I began writing my novel Dog Roses: a gay man’s rites of passage that is serialised on my fiction blog:

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/dog-roses-chapter-one_14.htm

  

Few of my novels have appeared in print form as I was never able to interest a literary agent, but I always enjoyed writing them (albeit a struggle sometimes) and wanted to share them. To be honest, I did not expect the fiction blog to last long, but have been very encouraged by a growing readership and positive feedback over several years - from gay and straight readers alike - for both my gay-interest and general novels. Why do I write both general and gay-interest material?  Well, not least because I get fed-up with people who, once they realise a person is gay, choose to see no further than that; gay or straight, there is far more to all of us than our sexuality.

Being gay has never overly influenced my reading tastes. I enjoy (and write) gay as well as straight poetry and fiction. I used to be an avid reader, although less so now. Moreover, as regular readers will know, writing has always been an essential form of creative therapy for me; essential for my general well-being, that is, as I have suffered with depression since childhood. Now, at 70, it continues to sustain me and keeps my little grey cells ticking over; not just because I enjoy it, but also because it serves as a welcome distraction from living with mobility problems (since a bad fall in 2014) and prostate cancer (diagnosed in 2011). I did not expect to be growing old alone, without a partner, but I have some good friends, my blogs and blog readers ... and my writing; it is more than enough to keep me looking on the bright side of life.

Now, most of us find ourselves at a crossroads at least once in our lives, sometimes more often. Decisions to make. Which way to go, and what if...? Being gay is not a choice; we are as we are. The choice lies in whether or not we come out to family and friends, look the world in the eyes as a gay person or choose to remain in the proverbial closet; the latter can be a dark, lonely place as I discovered for myself until I finally got real and 'came out' in my late 30's although it took a nervous breakdown to make me see that it was a case of get real or stay lost.

The poem first appeared  in an anthology, Inspiring Minds, Poetry Now (Forward Press) 1999 and subsequently in my first major collection; the alternative title has been added since..

DOG ROSES or N-A-T-U-R-E (ALL-INCLUSIVE) LIFE FORCES

Dog roses

at the crossroads, twin journeys begin;

a scent of wild desire

smouldering...

within each savage breast,

despairing rest

Choices to make, promises

to break

Dog roses

filling our senses with glad times past;

catching up the moon,

sun setting fast,

teasing our desire,

fire with fire

Choices delayed, promises

put aside

Dog roses

at the crossroads, twin journeys begin;

a scent of wild desire

smouldering...

within each savage breast,

despairing rest

Children of Spring, born of nature,

deserving better

Copyright R. N. Taber 1999; 2011

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2000.]

L-O-V-E, Survivors

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

Today’s poem first appeared on the blogs in 2016, ad has since been (slightly) revised.

Staying positive and trying to keep looking on the bright side of life has never been harder for many of us than now as the Covid-19 coronavirus continues to take its toll around the world. Essentially, I am a positive thinking person; even so, life has a nasty habit of contriving circumstances likely to make us think differently, circumstances which, for whatever reason, spot a chink in our psychological armour and send us into free fall ...

Many years ago, my lie took a turn for the worse (not the first time) and I had a bad nervous breakdown; unable to see a way through it, I attempted suicide. Fortunately, life forces I cannot begin to describe kicked in, and I started to see something of the wood through its trees. I recall telling a doctor, "I can't do this." His reply has stayed with me ever since. "Yes, you can," he said, "... just tell yourself over and over that you will get through it, and you will. Better still, focus on all the positive things you want to do that giving up now will never let you, and go with the damn flow, man, go with the flow." 

So … I went with the damn flow, and survived to tell the tale.

Good or bad, we make the world we live in and it is up to all of us to try and make it a better one.

Humanity's rage to live for love and the greater good will always defeat its enemies in the end.

Looking on the bright side of life may not always be easy, but human beings have a natural capacity for love, in all its shapes and forms, and the more we can focus on that the better. 

(Did I say it would be easy...?) 

This poem is a villanelle.

L-O-V-E, SURVIVORS

Though bigotry and hate thrive 

among the world’s power brokers,

it’s love that will see us survive

Always, people willing to drive

forces for good to the aid of others,

though bigotry and hate thrive

While terrorist-led plots connive

to mock this world’s peacemakers,

it's love that will see us survive

Open heart and mind ever contrive

to expose the worst attention seekers,

though bigotry and hate thrive

If life giving forces as bees to hive,

(a warning sting for potential takers)

it’s love that will see us survive

As sure to keep freedom's name alive,

as frustrate its would-be code breakers;

though bigotry and hate thrive,

it’s love that will see us survive 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2016, 2020

Human Spirit, Life Forces

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

Today’s poem is, yes, another kenning; it first appeared on the blog in November 2009, again in 2011 and today (for a second time) by 'Hannah and Jonathan’ for no special reason other than "it always lifts our spirits." Well, thank you, folks, happy to oblige.

Several people have commented to me recently that they feel "like death warmed up" and /or "totally drained" by the pandemic and its everyday implications for and limitations on everyday life; and so say all of us, I suspect. We can but stay positive and trust the human spirit to help us run the gamut and survive the stronger, not than weaker for it. Never easy, of course, even at the best of times.

A friend I knew as a student once confided that he 'envied' poets and others engaging in the arts because ' they can experience at first hand the everlasting quality of a vibrant Poetry of Life that passes so many of us by. At best..." he conceded, "...we can enjoy it while it lasts, provided we even recognise it for what it is at the time, of course. But, let's face it who want to be reminded once it moves on? I mean to say, no one wants to be reminded of any what-might-have-been, do they?"

While these were rhetorical questions, of course, I practised my right to agree to differ anyway, pointing out that no human experience either passes us by or even moves on completely, but remains a part of us, and whether we like/acknowledge it or not, it helps shape who we are and how we learn from whatever might-have-been may have affected us as it clearly had my friend. He shrugged, commented that "you arty types are all the same, always looking on the brighter side of life, and expecting the rest of us to take a leaf out of your poetry books." We both laughed. and he changed the subject.

Strange, isn't it, how some conversations stay with you like the lyric of a song you can't forget, as much for the singer as the song, if not more so...? Arts and artists, they help shape our lives along with their own; as for who gets the better deal, active participant or audience, that's anyone's guess, although I suspect it is in some timely inspiration that lies the key to any answers. Nor should it ever be assumed that anyone outside the arts field has ever been excluded from enjoying the Poetry of Life; it is a global consciousness, open to and welcoming anyone whose natural spirit engages with the poetry (and prose) of life in all its human diversity of expression and experience.

As regular readers of either or both poetry blogs will know only too well, I subscribe to no religion as such; an empathy with nature since childhood, though, leads me confess an intimate relationship with Pantheism in the sense that I see any 'God' as nature, rather than its creator, having never felt comfortable with the idea of a personified God.

Sadly, while I respect world religion/s, few who enter into them respect my point of view; neither atheist nor agnostic am I, though, so can we not simply agree to differ and get on with our lives without invoking words on historical tablets of stone that would keep us apart ...?

So ...what happens to the human spirit once its host body dies?  Regular readers will know by now that my sense of a posthumous consciousness is another of the life forces my poem suggests drives  a human spirit that ia not only eternal, but also, in its own unique way, continues to not only make a 'live' contribution to history .... be it in a personal and/or wider sense.

HUMAN SPIRIT, LIFE FORCES

I am that life force feeling its way

into dreams, making sure moon and stars

shine love’s light through layers

of darkness if only to reveal what’s real

in a world so easily misled by word

or gesture, generally making a poor show

of communicating such feelings

as all our kinder senses often banging

at the doors of closed minds

I am that life force lending a shoulder

to cry on, an ear to confide in, sees caution

thrown to the wind and returns it

as a kindness, suggesting we reconsider

persistently pitting human nature

against its other selves, risk losing face

in the eyes of old (and new) gods

looking down on our crude obsession

with mortality, and wondering why

I am that life force to whom they turn

whom flames of any passion would devour

for better, for worse, but only ashes

where we'd have left a blaze of memory

to comfort, leave us feeling secure,

whatever some Grim Reaper may yet

demand of us; no life force, he,

intending to override the Poetry of Life,

foiled by the resilience of its humanity

Come day or night, find me, Earth Mother,

archiving centuries of nurture

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010, 2020

[Note: This post/ poem also appears on mygeneral poetry blog today given that the poem (no less than all poetry) is all-inclusive, and feedback suggests many readers only drop in to one or the other blog; an earlier version of the poem appears in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010.]

Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow, a Unique Species of Rose

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

[Update: 11/7/2020: I am often criticised for rarely using full stops at the end of stanzas; fair enough, but I see a poem (like life and time) as a continuum; it is meant to give the reader food for thought; for much the same reason, I often hyphenate words to bring them together, such as yesterday-today-tomorrow in the poem below. Hopefully, the reader will continue to consider the implications and relation to the poem’s theme/s long after they have forgotten the poem itself.] RT

In the closing scenes of a classic movie Gone with the Wind - based on a novel of the same name by Margaret Mitchell - its heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, magnificently portrayed by Vivien Leigh, briefly considers confronting some uncomfortable home truths before backing out with the immortal words, “I’ll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.”

How many of us, I wonder, have told ourselves much the same thing, and for how many of us has that changed much, if anything …?

Me? As guilty as sin … as are most if not all of us.

Meanwhile, while time passes and, for the most part, poor, misunderstood humanity persists in pausing at the brink of self-awareness … if only to excuse this or that course of action (or inaction) should it ever be called to account.  

Time, marking the days that come and go in our lives, may well be much the same for everyone; it is how we choose to nurture those days (or not, as the case may be) that makes them unique for each and every one of us, whoever and wherever. Raison d'être, too, is unique, to every individual even in shared circumstances like relationships; I dare say the world would be a better, kinder, place if only we were (all) to remember that, more often, especially those among us - in all walks of life - inclined to rush to judgement.

“It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important…" 

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

YESTERDAY-TODAY-TOMORROW, A UNIQUE SPECIES OF ROSE

Yesterday, I’d traverse deserts,

goaded by false images to kneel and drink

from oases of illusion

Yesterday, I’d climb leafy trees

browse the words of ancient philosophers

in passing clouds

Yesterday, I’d swim in the oceans,

bear witness to creatures choking to death

on human waste

Today, I’ll try to pass on something

of lessons learned by the mind-body-spirit

in poetry and prose

Today, I’ll try stirring cloth ears

all but glued to mobile phones into hearing

global warnings

Today, I’d do an Internet search

for answers to questions ever plaguing me,

but, alas, no wi-fi

Tomorrow, I’ll join other nomads

(still) misled by fake news, kneeling to drink

from oases of delusion

Tomorrow, I’ll ask the few trees left

how Earth Mother might have had us comply

had we but listened …?

Tomorrow, I’ll start thinking of ways

to prevent stereotypes slamming down the lid

of the box they put me in

Yesterday-today-tomorrow, live streams

of consciousness calling on Earth to reconcile

nature and human nature

Yesterday-today-tomorrow, last spotted

sailing under false colours where imagination

having settle for cast-offs

Yesterday-today-tomorrow, making hay

in the sunshine, world clocks winding us up

and down, up and down ...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2019

Wilde at Heart

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

Today's poem first appeared on the blog in 2017. 

Someone who introduces himself as a "religious person" has emailed to berate me for "ignoring" the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic and even publishing a gay-interest poetry blog at all." What can I say? I can only refer this reader to my general poetry blog where I have been making reference to the pandemic all the time. Regarding the creation of this blog, our sexuality is an important part of who we are, and we are all, in turn, part of a common humanity. Not everyone likes poetry, of course, but if he cannot bring himself to read either blog, I confess to being puzzled as to how and why he feels it is his "duty" to attack me for them. wry bardic chuckle

Over the years, I have made a number of significant revisions to my (published and unpublished) poems and novels. Eventually all my print books will hopefully have been converted to revised editions in e-format but this will take some time. As I am in my 70's now, I may need to depend on someone else. Publishers - other than anthology publishers and poetry magazine editors - have never shown any interest in my poetry because I have always insisted on insist on including a gay-interest section so I have mostly self-published. Consequently, my collections have only been on sale in the UK. While costly, I have always more than broken even with sales, and more importantly been very encouraged by feedback from gay and straight readers alike.

Find below, my dedication poem to Oscar Wilde from my  collection Tracking the Torchbearer. I read it on You Tube (NB under its original title, 'De Profundis') beside a wonderful sculpture - 'A Conversation with Oscar Wilde' by Maggie Hambling - that can be found in central London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxcbIozftcE

OR Access my You Tube channel and search there:

http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

The poem was written in 1981; that I was able to write it at all played a significant part in the long haul of recovery from a nervous breakdown in 1979 that was perhaps inevitable after spending many years afraid - for various reasons - to be openly gay.

WILDE AT HEART

I lay floating in an ocean of misery,

willing myself to drown

while dolphins kept me company

and Apollo lingered on

Sharks, they kept a hungry distance,

an albatross winged by,

while waves lent a gentle cadence

to twilight’s lullaby

Went into free fall to the ocean floor

and would have stayed,

but Apollo demanded of me more

while the dolphins cried

I let them have their way if reluctantly,

screaming for their motivation,

peering into a misty-eyed mortality,

without rhyme or reason

No one answered my question though

I strained to hear,

then twilight let a cloud pass through

and I found a poem there

Body of straw in that ocean of misery,

willing myself to drown,

I read an ode to life, love and a history

of peace after wars hard won

It told how little in life ever comes easy

including death …

such is the fickle nature of humanity

in the sight of Earth Mother

I felt a poet’s passion take hold of me,

heard its voice in a seagull’s cry,

swimming me across an ocean of misery

to walk kinder shores, head high

I woke in tears still drenching my pillow,

began (slowly) to recover;

at chinks in the blinds, winks from Apollo

assuring me the worst was over

Copyright R. N. Taber 1982; 2007

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, March 2012]

[Note: Tragically of course, for Wilde, the worst was far from over during his lifetime.