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, 2 April 2017

On the Mend


Regular readers will be aware that I suffered a severe nervous breakdown in 1979. As I began to recover, so I started writing again as much by way of creative therapy as any natural love for the art form. Following an indescribable struggle with mind, body and spirit, I finally regained a sense of ‘normality’ and was fortunate enough to dig myself out of that Black Hole, unemployment, and return to work a few years later. In 2005, I began publishing poems, self-publishing the only option open to me as no literary agents or publishers wanted my gay-interest material and I refused to leave it out.

This poem (a villanelle) has been significantly revised since I published in 2005, itself a (lesser) revision of a (handwritten) version written during the 1990’s. Not one of my better poems, perhaps, although its place in the history of my poetry of no small significance. 

For years now, I have been striving to (a) reach out to readers, (b) share an inner learning curve, and (c) reconcile form and content in my poetry in a way that does some justice to its art form; it has been a long journey, and not over yet. To critics who suggest I should not poet poems until I and they are ‘ready’ I can only say that, having sowed various seeds, I am never quite clear how they might grow until they flower; sometimes they remain but seeds or may sprout shoots that refuse to flower or may flower in ways that are true to a picture on the seed packet.

One way or another, we have to take responsibility for ourselves; playing the blame game never got anybody anywhere hast unless it’s a Black Hole like the one I crawled out of years ago into a self-awareness that insisted I stop playing Jack-in-a Box about being gay and learned to take responsibility for and a pride in a better, kinder self than any which life experience had all but succeeded in moulding me into hitherto.

I’m 71 now, and still learning…

ON THE MEND

We broke the pot,
(Earth Mother cried)
up to us to mend it…

Birthdays forgot,
(the old beggar died)
we broke the pot

Loyalty split,
(so our ‘Betters’ lied?)
up to us to mend it

Peace, it could not
get the better of pride;
we broke the pot

To each our lot;
though humanity divide,
up to us to mend it

Marking the spot
where hope all but died;
we broke the pot,
up to us to mend it…

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2017

[Note: An earlier version of this poem first appeared under the title 'Picking Up the Pieces' in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007; revised ed. in e-format in preparation.]

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, 3 January 2016

A Growing Sense of Where Reason Fears to Tread


As I grow old (born 1945) I can’t help wondering if I may well have made fewer mistakes in life had I put more trust in heartfelt sensibilities and less in the (arguably) devious designs of reason.

Whatever, what is done is done and can never be undone although (sometimes) compensated for if only in part…provided we have (or can find) the heart for it.

A GROWING SENSE OF WHERE REASON FEARS TO TREAD

Days, weeks, years,
stretching across a wasteland
like a disused rail track
where ghosts play
at mind games to confuse us
about time lines

Time lines, in a haze
of remembrance playing fast
and loose with Memory
where conscience
pulls our strings and leads us
into shadowy places

In shadowy places,
wandering as lost and alone
as a child whose parent,
but for one awful moment 
in time let fall the clinging hand
into unbearable space

An awful vacuum
this freedom once longed for
with, oh, such passion,
meant to fire the flames 
of ambition, not made scapegoat
for an untimely burn out

Responsibility, moral
obligations where bucks stop
at a scary self-searching
where none so blind as dare 
not see block any home truths
demanding a voice

Home truths, eroding
comfort zones, pulling rugs
from under feet bent
on standing up to be seen 
scoring points over alternatives
and so-called 'betters'

Alternatives, for better
or worse, we’ll never know
unless given a voice, 
allowed to speak, make a case
for setting mind-body-spirit free
from dogma's chains

Mind, body, human spirit
stretching across a wasteland
like a disused rail track
where ghosts play football 
with 'live' heads, scoring off-side
more often than not

Copyright R. N. Taber 2016, 2019














Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, 3 June 2013

Through a Glass Darkly

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

An earlier version of this poem as first published in the anthology An Immortal Truth, Poetry Now [Forward Press] 2000 and subsequently in my first collection the following year.

The original version was written in 1984 following a discussion with several peers about how awful we were sometimes when we were children and how, whenever we look in memory’s mirror for those halcyon days, maturity invariably summons certain regrets that, in turn, cause cracks to appear...


To see “through a glass” (mirror) darkly” is to have an obscure or imperfect vision of reality. The expression is often presumed to have come from the writings of Paul, the Apostle who suggests that while we may not see clearly in the Here-and-Now, we will do so at the end of time. 

Alternatively: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." Corinthians Chap 13 verse 12 (I know my Bible, it is a good read, even though I had rejected religion for nature by the age of 11 years.)

Whatever, many if not most children, may well know right from wrong, but lack the experience maturity brings to imagine the broader consequences of either. Ahm yes, but how many of us have the imagination to ever really understand the wider consequences of our actions ...? 

There is a lot to be said for the old adages, two that instantly spring to mind are 'Look before you leap.' and 'A little thought goes a long way.'

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 

In a pretty side street, tree lined,
its children playing hide-and-seek
make plenty din enough
to wake the dead, the old man says
who lives on the ground floor
of an end house whose shiny steps
such fun we slip, towering wall
a thrill to squeal and climb, knowing
yell and fuss, but by the time he’ll rush,
no sign of us

Waving a stick, he’ll bawl us out
and we’ll mouth him back, but not until
the door slams shut. Oh, but kids
at play make no excuses, just din enough
to wake the dead, the old man says,
treading the ground floor of the end house
whose mossy steps so snug we sprawl,
graffiti wall a joy to lean, grubby curtains
a-quiver at our kissing or could it be for all
he’s missing...?

Children gone, traffic enough
to wake the dead, the old man said
who lived that shabby room
whose crabby gloom we never spared;
brave wall, a sorry spread,
no curtains (windows boarded up instead)
ghosts playing hide-and-seek
with eternity facing a bleak affinity
for wings circling the last tree left standing,
cracks in a mirror appearing

 Uncomfortable truths, a cruelty enduring

Copyright R. N. Taber 2000; 2011


Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,