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].

Name:
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.

Monday 1 October 2012

A Feeling For Love-Hate Relationships

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

Some readers may be interested to know that a new serial begins on my fiction blog today. Sacrilege was first published in the UK in 2008 and is Book Two in a planned trilogy Blasphemy-Sacrilege-Redemption. [Book Three has been delayed through illness but I hope to finish writing it in time to serialise it on the blog next year before publishing the entire trilogy as e-editions on Google Play.]

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.com

Meanwhile…

Can we really love and hate at the same time? I think so, yes. Some people (and places) make us SO mad sometimes, yet we love them to bits.

I hate London much of the time, especially these days as it is so overcrowded, yet I miss it as a lover misses his or her partner whenever I am away for long.  Certainly, too, I have discovered it is possible to hate certain people almost as much as loving them. They are weighty words, love and hate. I suspect we use them too freely in the course of everyday conversation, indeed as we journey through life.

There are even more abstract forms of love hate-relationships, too, which nonetheless have a bearing on our lives; we may well prefer to avoid them, but such is our need for them that we have little or no choice but to engage with them now and then. Mind you, any thanks for their timely intervention is likely to be more than a shade mixed with resentment for our feeling  unable to resists engaging with them at all; much the same principle applies to many if not most love-hate relationships turn…

This poem is a kenning.

A FEELING FOR LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIPS

Oh, but I will always try
to be there for you whenever
I am needed,
keep my distance when it feels
more appropriate,
listen whenever you need an ear,
and support you
where the heart makes a pitch
for centre-stage

Oh, but I will always try
to look into your head should
you turn against me
in the intense heat of emotions
setting themselves
against us (for whatever reason)
descending to a wintry chill
and left unacknowledged between
cracks in thin ice

Oh, but I will always try
to bring you gently down to earth
when fine ideals fly
in the face of temporal priorities
primed to shoot down
any aspirations of a human spirit
likely to blow a hole
in the arms budget, and give peace
a fighting chance

Agreed cover for home truths and lies,
I pass for the Spirit of Compromise

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012





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