Mind Games OR Something about Ghosts and Goldfish

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

Apart from adding the occasional new poem, I may well cease blogging - after an enjoyable ten years - once there is no alternative to using the new blogger format.While I have no idea how long my poetry will be accessible here, once I cease to contribute on a regular basis, any readers who enjoy my work may be interested to know I am in the process of creating revised editions of my previous print collections, but in e-format. I am working on an eighth collection at the moment of which I plan to self-publish a limited number of editions in print form, and later reproduce in e-format.

Although a significant number of readers from 70+ different countries visit my poetry blogs on a regular basis, little interest has been shown by print publishers for poetry collections that include gay-interest and general poems; but that is who I am, no less a mixed bag of sense and sensibility than anyone else.

Once print copies of my latest collection are available (hopefully, within a few months) I will let you know, and anyone interested can purchase direct at a very fair price; the same will apply to any subsequent e-editions of my collection titles.

Meanwhile …

Most if not all of us have regrets of one kind or another at just about every stage in our lives. The trick is never to believe it is too late to do something we wished we had done but couldn’t, wouldn’t or simply didn’t for whatever reason. We cannot turn back the tide of subsequent events, of course, but more often than not we can put our minds at rest to some extent rather than keep fretting our lives away…

Worse, perhaps, is regretting something we did simply because we wanted to do it, but the consequences were not as we may have hoped. Even so, better to have given it a go than spend a lifetime wondering how things might have turned out if only…

Yes, there will be some who feel inclined to observe, even judge us, but judge us according to criteria of their own, rarely if ever ours. We may well care what they think, but they might as well observe a goldfish for all it really matters. [Does it matter to a goldfish what we think of them, I wonder? Who knows…? If not, as I suspect, maybe there is some cause for envy there after all…] Whatever, let's be self-confident not self-conscious, yes? YES.

I once asked a tramp why he lived rough. ‘Because I like it’, he said, ‘and sleeping under the stars gives me a good feeling, so it does.’ ‘What about when it’s pouring with rain and freezing cold?’ I wanted to know. He shrugged. “We all of us have to take the rough with the smooth, so we do. Besides, the stars aren’t going anywhere are they...?’

MIND GAMES or SOMETHING ABOUT GHOSTS AND GOLDFISH ...

Can’t hear for ghosts,

banging at the door, damp stains

on walls, bars

across a window taunting us

with wannabe personae

wanting to know why we never

made the grade

Sweating like sick kids

on a sunny spring day who’s ma

won’t let us out to play,

always looking for new ways

to get by, but weary

of puzzles, can’t help but envy

the goldfish

Dreams like broken hearts

falling apart, people pretending

not to notice for fear

of ‘getting involved’ since

(after all) if the Bogeyman

can't be blamed for everything

then who…?

Puppets jerking to order,

except for a street guitar player

making little sense

of a world losing its dignity,

too busy scoring points

against other locals to give music

its due

Goldfish on the sideboard

giving me the eye as if curious

to know why I much prefer

making assumptions to knowing

what's what, such as

whether or not goldfish are happy

with their lot

Ghosts, yelling at the door,

nothing to say I haven't heard

so many times before,

and chose to turn a half-deaf ear;

(shrugs) for all the good

it would have done to let them in

and get cosy

Anaesthetized by blame

is all we cellmates are good for,

deserving everything

we get, prisoners of conscience

locked in drab cells

of petty regret for a lifetime spent

envying goldfish

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2015

[Note: Revised (2015) from an earlier version entitled ‘Inside’ that appears in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]