T-I-M-E, Charging Up for Change

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Oh, but I remember the frumpy fifties so well…as if they were but a few years ago instead of half a century…! The leap in to the 1960 gave us all a welcome shock. Looking back, though, how much do we recall as it really was and how much has been airbrushed along the way by a cult mythology...?

Oh, but where DOES the time go, eh?

T-I-M-E, CHARGING UP FOR CHANGE

Oh, those formal, frumpy fifties!

BBC TV announcers

in evening dress even in the afternoon…

Glued to the radio (hangover

from a bleak wartime) while the likes

of Bronco, Cheyenne, Wells Fargo

and Wagon Train harvest rich myths  

of the old American West

for future generations to look back

with pride, the shame

of Wounded Knee left to Hollywood

with poor excuses

Off ‘n’ away with post-war blues,

we’re looking good…

Enter, skiffle and Lonnie Donegan

before rock and roll began

to take root and Juke Box Jury

woke us all up from days

of ballroom dancing to bold frontiers

of disco (forget the Lone Ranger

and Tonto); Mods and rockers fighting

each other for tabloid headlines,

girls adapting their hemlines to more

than simply fashion…

boys discovering drainpipe trousers

and winkle-picker shoes

Off ‘n’ away with post-war blues,

let the good times roll…

Along came Z-cars, eagerly elbowing out

dear old Dixon of Dock Green

(shortly doomed to bite the dust along

with Bronco and the rest);

the sixties taking over, Beatlemania

on a par with world religions,

politics fair game for anyone free

(supposedly) to indulge controversial

opinions of their own

so long as nothing likely to offend

Cold War ethics among gentlemen spies

and old boy networks

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2014

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in  A Feeling For The Quickness Of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.] 

War of Words

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“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” - John Lydgate (English poet)

In my humble opinion, they should not go into politics who fail to appreciate the wisdom of Lydgate’s words. Most if not all of us have to compromise sometimes; it requires give and take on all sides to get the best deal available for everyone in what are inevitably circumstances enough to test anyone’s mettle. Sadly, fair play and politics (world, national and local) do not often go hand in hand; the rhetoric is there, and plenty of it - it's election fodder, after all - but sadly not always backed up by action.

This poem is a villanelle.

WAR OF WORDS

A war of words in everyone’s face,

fake news stirring up the media fray,

lending tunnel vision pride of place

Good intentions on everyone’s case,

rumours-and-gossip, Dish of the Day;

a war of words in everyone’s face 

Dead Cert, favourite to lose the race

(ever in the running, come what may)

lending tunnel vision pride of place

It’s a brave soul dares cut to the chase

once primed to keep home truths at bay;

a war of words in everyone’s face

Anticipation, needs must touch base,

providing the world with plenty to say,

lending tunnel vision pride of place

Should ever we fail to make our case,

it’s not the Devil we know wins per se;  

a war of words in everyone’s face,

lending tunnel vision pride of place

Copyright R. N. Taber 2019, 2020

[March 23^rd 2019]

Mind-Body-Spirit, Learning Curve

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A slightly different version of today’s poem first appeared in an anthology, The Scene is Set, Poetry Now (Forward Press) 2002, CC&D Scars Publications, U.S.) the same year, and subsequently in my collection; it also appeared in Ygdrasil, a Journal of the Poetic Arts (an on-line monthly webzine) in 2005.

I spent many years working as a librarian in public libraries. Young people would come in to do their homework and I would ask them how they were getting on at school. Their responses would vary from politely indifferent to openly hostile towards the school environment as they saw it. I would nod, smile, and try to sound encouraging. It was hostility, though, that would invariably trigger memories of my own schooldays when homework would inevitably get me thinking about matters other than what I needed to be getting on with for school the next day.

Homework taxes the brain and sends all kinds of messages into the mind, not all of which are directly relevant to the matter in hand; a stressful process, yet curiously liberating. It isn’t healthy to close our minds to what is going on (at any age) either in the world at large or, more importantly, within ourselves.

I used to wonder sometimes if teachers and parents understand how scary homework sessions can be. It would strike me that few do or they would be helping us answer more questions about life and human nature than any regular hypothesis considered suitable (by whom, I used to ask myself?) for homework.

Among my teachers at junior and secondary schools, there were a few who taught me more than a relatively narrow curriculum allowed. I may not have been able to articulate on this particular learning process for years, but especially as a teenager - it sowed seeds of thought embracing mind, body and spirit that I sensed required nurture. By way of their many throw-away comments and occasional voiced opinions about all sorts, I accessed aspects of philosophy of which I would otherwise have been left ignorant, helping me to develop an affinity with various life forces providing lasting food for thought that has influenced, guided, helped and supported me through good times and bad all my life.

While all the rest made me feel much like a caged bird anxious to be free, this was a real learning curve, one which university would expand upon and help clarify way beyond the relatively limited scope of academia, truly an education for life…one which, of course, never ends.

MIND-BODY-SPIRIT, LEARNING CURVE

Photos by the bed,
posters on the wall, press cuttings
on a chair likely to hit the floor
if someone opens the door,
so the door stays shut,
while anxious faces (rightly) debate
prejudices, pollution,
nature conservation, education,
immigration, religion,
traffic congestion, political correctness,
safer sex, drugs, always having
to stay alert or be put down
by a clamour of everyday voices
kicking what passes
for an agenda for life (theirs, not ours)
like a football on a field
of play according to whatever rules,
conventions or dogma
happens to be match of the day,
conscience scoring an own goal as often
as not, but keeps quiet

So many questions, few answers, lies,
half lies, part truths,
and home truths like moths flummoxed
by a light bulb

Please, someone,
open the door (not meant to stay shut)
and let us out
to have our say, play our part,
prove the world
has a heart, beating behind closed doors
because children are meant
to be seen not heard
and teenagers don't have a clue
even though they always think they do.
(Oh, and says who...?)
Everyone has a voice, deserves an ear,
put right if wrong,
always up for discussion if only
to understand  the need
for whomsoever to understand the what
and the why, who's likely
to gain and who's as likely to lose
in games grown-ups 'betters'
so love to play ostensibly to save us
from ourselves

So who's kidding who, we would all
so love to ask and be told,
if we could but bring our classroom voices
to the outside world?

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2018

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'Homework' in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]

A Virtuous Irony

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Now, every religion has its own Belief while some of us cannot believe in (any) religion.

Who’s to say who’s right or wrong?

Should we not give everyone the benefit of the doubt, each going his or her own way while taking care to share the better, kinder, principles of a common humanity? Some religions treat any diversion from its dogma as a cardinal sin. Whatever happened to that freedom of the human spirit to express itself in its own way, and who has the right to condemn someone for acting in good faith if not within dogma's stricter parameters?

Religion is meant to be about love and peace...and mutual respect for another person's spiritual identity, whether or not it relates to the same religion or any religion at all if only because religion (as I discovered for myself even as a child) has no monopoly on spirituality.

A sense of spirituality is common to us all, just as it is down to each and every one of us to tap into it
if and how we choose. Yet, what is a cause for celebration is so often marked by those who should know better as a cause for division.

A VIRTUOUS IRONY

Religious festivals are times
people come together,
are good to one another, braving
dark and stormy weather

Religious festivals make merry
come rain, snow, winter mist,
find sunny smiles not on any list
left by old Jack Frost

But you can’t always believe
all they so love to feed us,
like comfort and joy at Christmas
(just ask the homeless)

No, you cannot always believe
everything they tell you,
be the preacher Christian, Muslim,
Sikh, Jew or Hindu…

Religion (not God) is the listener
ever turning a deaf ear
come Ramadan, Diwali, Passover
and Easter once a year

In truth, we should learn to respect
Faiths across the world,
ironically divided by a single word,
a comfort zone called ‘God’

Who and what should we believe
when so many use religion
for their own ends, as ammunition,
back-up for a safe h(e)aven?

All religions encourage suspicion,
led by Masters of Ceremony
tasked with making a virtue of irony
behind a mask of spirituality

Copyright R. N. Taber 2009; 2016

Making Good Time

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A neighbour in the road where I lived as a child was always helping others. Once, I fell over, and cut my knee badly. Immediately, she took me inside, wiped it clean, and applied a plaster because she knew my mother would not be at home, having met her while out shopping. I thanked her for making the time to be my Good Samaritan, which parable from the New Testament I had heard only days before at Sunday School. (It would be a few years later before I gave up on religion.) She simply shrugged and commented, “Better to make time and have something to show for it than not.” I have never forgotten those words even though some 60+ years have passed since that day.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” 

 - Omar Khayyám

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.” 

- Lao Tzu

MAKING GOOD TIME

Were life a clock face and we its hands,

measuring out time as in the footsteps of ghosts,

at any second in any hour, find someone

standing up to be counted, a principle at stake

that warrants neither any compromise

or convenient slip of memory into some pit

of consciousness whose only purpose

to stir pangs of guilt now and then, though nothing

to write home about, better archived

Were life a clock face and we its hands,

measuring out time as a grocer might well weigh

out a shopper’s vegetables for payment

over a crowded counter, queue growing longer,

find someone standing up to be counted

making their voice heard over the general hubbub

protesting about an aggressive queue jumper

whom no one cares to remark upon aloud for fear

of any thought police listening in

Were life a clock face and we its hands.

measuring out time as a student of human nature

might well mark how many times in a day

bear witness to common courtesy, an awareness

of another person’s disability, and the need

to lend a helping hand or surrender a seat on a bus

or train, go out of their way in no time at all

for making a difference, transforming a mountain

into a molehill for someone, anyone

Were life a clock face, and we its hands, see us fly

past-present-future in the blink of an all-seeing eye

Copyright R. N. Taber 2009