One World, Mixed feelings, a Thousand Cuts

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

[Update July 3rd 2018]:Every now and then readers email to ask why I post both gay-interest and general poems on my Google+ site. [Google have since removed personal posts from that site.]A reader wrote only yesterday to insist they are separate genres. Well, everyone is entitled to their point of view, but I see them as alternative voices of the same genre, A poem is a poem is a poem regardless of content just as a person is a person is a person regardless of colour, creed, sex or sexuality. Similarly, one voice, one world. As I have said before, our differences don't make us different, only human.]

In 2016, National Theatre head Rufus Norris and artist Jeremy Deller were behind a project taking place across the UK with men dressed as World War One soldiers. Each carried a card with the name of the soldier they represented and his age - if known - when he died. This ‘living memorial’ involved about 1,500 voluntary participants appearing in public spaces across the UK; the project, entitled We're Here Because We're Here, was commissioned by 14-18 NOW, the UK's arts programme for the World War One centenary.

Gay people go to war too, of course, always have and always will even if they have had to keep their sexuality under wraps. (Why under wraps? Nature does not discriminate so why should human nature; human nature is better than that...isn't it? Oh, world religions may discriminate but I sincerely doubt any God would, and I don't say that because I am gay but simply as a human being with a strong sense of spirituality that I chose to take from nature rather than any religion even as a child.)

Now, I do not believe in a life after death as such, but neither do I believe in some eternal nothingness. Nature tells me there is a never-ending sense of renewal. My own feelings assure me we live on in the lives - not just the memory - of others. So what of those who never knew us and what will happen to those memories when family and friends who shared them are all dead?  No one knows, of course, and although I do not subscribe to any religion, I envy those who do if only in the sense that it must be very comforting to feel assured that this life is not all there is for us.

Ah, but we are all influenced by other people; in turn, we, too, influence others by what we say and do. In this way we create a ‘presence’ that even death cannot wipe away as if we were but a smudge on the temporal landscape. In this way, at least, we continue our paths through ‘live’ time and space if only in spirit.

There is an old saying, 'Where there's life, there's hope' - and life is everywhere...

This poem is a kenning.

ONE WORLD, MIXED FEELINGS, A THOUSAND CUTS

Death caught my hand one day,
and led me through a cold, dark place
where a part of me wanted to stay;
the cold, it stripped all my pain away;
the dark, it hid tears on my face
for the part of me so wanting to stay;
temptation, an end to endeavour,
but sure to make me suffer for a part
of me that’s come to...nothing?

Broken heart, telling me straight
while peering over Death’s shoulder
at that part of me wanting to die;
suddenly, a welcome light appears,
inciting a rush of heat to the body,
sufficient to allay even secret fears;
I succumb to a familiar embrace,
hear a loved voice reciting the poetry
of that part of me I cannot face

Enter, the life force of humanity,
its responsibility to liberty, equality
and fraternity, no excuses
(in any socio-cultural -religious name)
for undermining the principles
of democracy by silencing its voices
among which sexuality has no less
right to be heard and heeded as any other
in a world found wanting

I am Hope, homing in on world history,
inspiring free spirits, century to century

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2016

[Note: This is not a new post, but one that was accidentally deleted; the poem has been significantly revised since it first appeared on the blog in 2010.]