A Poet's Blog: Roger N.Taber shares his thoughts & poems...

Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian and poet-novelist.- "Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, Sexuality ... these are but parts of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to critical emails about my poetry. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

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Location: London, United Kingdom

Sadly, a bad fall in 2012 has left me with a mobility problem, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year hasn't helped, but I get out and about with my trusty walking stick as much as I can, take each day as it comes and try to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life. Many of my poems reflect the need to nurture a positive-thinking mindset whatever life throws at us.

Thursday, 25 October 2012

A Strictly Private Viewing

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

Today’s poem has not appeared on the blog since 2009. It first appeared in a Forward Press anthology, Poetry Rivals, 2009: Lyrical Winds and subsequently in my collection.

Now, dreams are often seen as an intrusion into our personal space, but personal space comprises conscious and unconscious thought. I see dreams as affording us a strictly private viewing of it, taking in all those parts that comprise the whole; reality, illusion, ego, home truths, denial, wishful thinking...etc. etc.

How we interpret dreams and may or may not let them influence us for better or worse...well, that's called choice.

A STRICTLY PRIVATE VIEWING

Cartoon faces moving across my sky
like a home movie;
I close tired eyes to push them away
but they haunt my mind;
happy faces, sad faces, tearful faces,
lips mouthing my name;
familiar, faintly familiar, some skeletal
expressions breaking out

Past, present, wishful thinking signals
to the brain to shut down
but they have logged on, not ready yet
to turn me off;
lies, half lies, bad errors of judgement
like some grotesque mob
up for rough justice for want of answers
I don’t have, never did;
monstrous accusations and insinuations
fall like bird droppings
on a statue’s public profile, frozen in time,
trapped in its own failings

I hear a distant cry, an echo of centuries
in pain, anger and grief
for all private lives and a personal space
relegated to speculation
new faces, clear signals, warning off
Conspirators to Nightmare,
put expressions of defeat to rout, deleted
like redundant icons on a screen;
benign spirits enough to grace a totem pole
take control, cast out
demons let slip past a kinder humanity
by an unforgiving hierarchy

Eyes open, eyes shut, sky relaying
to pillow the faces of love;
we sleep, we awaken to direct and star
in our own reality peep-show
for as long as it takes to log off from it all,
wondering if we might yet get
to carry on in a loved one's dream-poems
in remembrance of times past

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

'[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'A Penny to See the Peep-Show' in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]


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