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.

Sunday, 16 March 2014

Bitter Harvest


In reality, there is no such thing as easy money. Even a huge lottery win is rarely roses all the way and more often than not leaves a trail of heartbreak. Someone recently mentioned that betting is easy money (he had just won £50 on a horse.) Ah, but how many bets had he lost over years, I wondered? Even so, I resisted the temptation to ask and risk throwing cold water on an old man’s elation.

Many years ago, during a period of mental illness, I became addicted to fruit machines and probably wasted thousands of pounds over a period of several years. Fortunately, I am cured now and have a life. Gambling is no less addictive than drugs, smoking or alcohol. It can destroy people and their families. At the time, I was caught up in the protracted aftermath of a nervous breakdown. That’s when addiction strikes, when we’re at our most vulnerable. It can happen to anyone. So never give up on an addict, yeah? The challenge is trying to prevent addicts giving up on themselves.

It is an appalling indictment on contemporary society, especially given the stresses and strains of modern living, that there are relatively few rehabilitation centres or other avenues of help for addicts or those less obviously in the grip of mental illness. They may be the last to admit, it but they need friends and family to stand by them and be willing to go that last mile.

If you know an addict (drugs, gambling, whatever) please, please, be there for them. You won’t get much if anything by way of thanks, but no one can beat addiction without support from someone who cares that they should. Sometimes, yes, it’s a losing battle for everyone concerned, but we have to try…for all our sakes.

Did I say it was easy?

Every day, I hear someone say in the street, media, library, bus or train...words to the effect that there’s ‘easy’ money for the taking if we only play our cards right.  No, I don’t think so, not unless those 'cards' happen to be in sync with the kinder or at least more responsible elements of mind-body-spirit.

BITTER HARVEST

Public faces reaping
more respect than many
have earned the right
to expect in modern times;
paper tigers wandering
corridors of power, seeking
an easy prey, a nose
for more; bits and pieces,
(when put together)
likely to create an incomplete
jigsaw 

People come and go,
all history in the making,
fortunes for the taking;
winners, losers,
gamblers paying respects
to palaces of pleasure,
Stock Exchanges,
After Hours bars ringing
with a cacophony
of celebration, despair,
whatever...

Worldwide, trails
like snails’ slime tracking
the best and worst
of us, no discrimination;
looking to the future,
(things sure to get better)
Family of Man living
up to old myths, bearing
fruits to feed a world 
last observed harvesting 
lemon trees

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2014

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]


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Sunday, 4 August 2013

Listening Out for a Love Song


Only fools take little or no care to create and store happy memories as they go through life or on wintry days, when a north wind blows, they will have little or nothing by which to warm themselves, take hope, and feel inspired. 

Be sure, second hand memories won’t do the trick.

I have said much the same thing before and a reader got in touch to say that his partner has Alzheimer’s so what use are their happy memories?

Well, I believe that a person does not have to articulate on happy memories to enjoy them; the spirit of that happiness never dies and will sustain us through just about anything. In my experience, where that spirit is weak or absent, the human heart tells a very different story. 

I have known people with Alzheimer's and other forms of  dementia  Carers  have related experiences about loved ones with the illness as it progresses; many of those who have it seem able to convey and live (for much if not all the time) in the spirit of a happy past even though they cannot recall it in much or any detail. Perhaps this is wishful thinking of my part, but an overwhelming impression all the same.

A time may well come for ny of us when we forget the life we've had in the sense that we cannot articulate on it in any detail, but it will have left a trail of felt experiences that never quite leave us; our feelings can take us anywhere we want to be, and we do not need to choose as we are guaranteed a happy ending, if only because mind-body-spirit will be immune to anything less. 

A husband and devoted carer once said much the same thing to me so it isn’t just a poet’s rhetoric. ‘It keeps me sane,” he told me, “knowing that the spirit of the love we have shared for the best part of a lifetime is still there, intact. True, its human container is outwardly more than a shade battered, bruised and all but beyond recognition, but its contents will remain as fresh, pure and precious as ever for as long as at least one of us continues to draw breath. After that…who knows?”

Who, indeed  ...?

LISTENING OUT FOR A LOVE SONG

A north wind, penetrating within,
purging the soul, tearing skin
from a body staring ruin in the face,
and no way back to how it was.
(hope but a leaf or flower away)
swept along the wrong track,
hope fading, fear rising of losing
all mind-body-spirit that makes me 
who I am ... 

Blows a cruel wind, tears freezing,
faces turned heavenwards
seeking aid, mercy, grace, forgiveness
for the error of our ways,
judgments cast in stone to boost egos
begging their superiority
over minorities, teeth showing
like the smile on the face of a tiger
selecting priorities

We persevere. Let fear do its worst,
we shall endure, see the sun shine
in our faces again, belie the damage
of acid rain, camouflage our pain
under slick, blank sheets of copy paper
signifying nothing, signing us up
for whatever the world cares
to have us say we feel, no matter
what’s just or real

Listen. Above a howling of wolves,
a love song making itself felt ...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2019

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'When the Wind Blows' in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]


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Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Harvesting Imagination

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

Today’s poem is especially for ‘Hanna’ who asked if I have another poem about dementia as she looks after her brother who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; they both liked Misty Memories that I posted recently.

About 750,000 people here in the UK have dementia, and this number is expected to double in the next thirty years. I have seen the unbearably sad consequences for both sufferers and their carers. The British Government says it is committed to improving the care and experience of people with dementia and their carers by transforming dementia services to achieve better awareness, early diagnosis and high quality treatment at every stage and in every setting, with a greater focus on local delivery of quality outcomes and local accountability for achieving them. Let us hope so.

Some young people may say it does not affect them, but I know of at least two school children helping to look after a parent who has Alzheimer’s. Besides, we all have to grow old, and who knows…?

I once knew someone with Alzheimer’s who had been an English teacher and always loved poetry. Now and then in the later stages of the disease, she would come out with a very apt line or even a whole verse from a poem she’d once been able to recite by heart. So great an impression had some poems and events made on her that even the darker mists of memory failed to engulf them completely.

This poem is a villanelle, was inspired by people like my late friend and also the author Sir Terry Pratchett; indeed, all families/carers, some whom I have known personally, that have experienced or are experiencing the truly heartbreaking task of watching their loved ones' mental faculties slowly winding down. 

HARVESTING IMAGINATION

Wheels of the mind winding down;
though time play fast and loose with us,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination

A smile but lost its way in a frown
seeks sanctuary in Cinderella memories,
wheels of the mind winding down

Though dignity wear a faded gown
as it stumbles through a Hall of Mirrors,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination

A heart that wears love’s crown
keeps beauty in the folds of its favours,
wheels of the mind winding down

Love’s spirit unbowed, unbeaten,
turning the pages of life’s kinder stories,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination

Among spoils of battles lost and won,
pathways to peace for all benign ghosts;
wheels of the mind winding down,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination


Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

[Note: This poem first appeared in Ygdrasil, an online poetry journal, June 2010, and subsequently in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2010]

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