https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Hello, everyone, from London UK
“The more important thing is not the object of love, but
the emotion itself”. – Gore Vidal
“There will always be enemies. Time to stop being your
own.” – Larry Kramer
“Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without
and know we cannot live within.” – James Baldwin
“I’d rather burn in hell than worship an anti-gay God.”
– Desmond Tutu
Now, although some readers have objected to any
gay-interest poems that I post here now and then as well as on my other poetry
blog, I could not refuse a reader who simply signs his email as ‘a caring dad’.
He says he has good reason to suspect that one of his sons may be gay, and
doesn’t want him to live ‘in some lonely closet’. Having read a selection of
poems on my gay blog, he asks that I post another here as the son in question
is a regular visitor, since which he “...has come close to acknowledging his
sexuality to himself and everyone else...”
Well, good luck, dad, and if, indeed, your son is gay,
I wish you both a far closer relationship that I was ever able to share with my
own father.
As I keep telling readers who chance upon my gay blog
(more often than not by accident than design) most of my gay-specific poems are
in the blog archives, so do, take a look sometime. I will be 77 years old this
year and, not unsurprisingly, no longer sexually active, especially after
living with prostate cancer for a good ten years now; hence, a failing
inspiration with regard to poetry that embraces LGBT matters.😉
Having said that, though, my main interest in
writing any poem is that poetry like any art form, excludes no one.
Besides, I may be growing old, but I still have the mind-body-spirit of a gay
man; nor does being of any LGBT persuasion, exclude us from such universal thought
processes and opinions as reflected in this and that ethos throughout history.
Now, as I have said on previous posts, over the years, I 've met a significant number of
people - from all walks of life and religion - who have been made to feel they
must choose between communing with a native sense of spirituality and engaging
with desires of the flesh. To anyone from any community, this would have
taken them into a state of crisis during the 1950’s when I was growing up; a post-war society that saw same sex
relationships as a crime against God and nature. Prejudice against LGBT folks in those days was so intense that we lived in fear of being 'outed' and subsequently getting beaten up or worse...
As any regular reader of either or both of my poetry
blogs will know, it was not until my early 30’s that I finally saw my way clear
to face the world as a gay man. I have openly supported LGBT rights ever since; hopefully, the ranks of heterosexual men and women who feel able to do likewise will continue to grow...
God, I had been told, time and again, is a God of
Love. Love, of course, comes in many shapes and forms and I came to believe
that love between two people of the same sex would not - contrary to the religious
dogma in which I had been all but brainwashed for years - be considered a
blasphemy likely to send me to Hell. By
then, too, I had discovered for myself how we can so easily be misled into creating
our own Heaven and Hell here on Earth, in such ways as are anything but
metaphorical...!
Prejudice of any description, towards anyone, is as much
of an affront to human dignity as it has always been. Now, though, relatively
slowly but surely, common sense, fairness and an equality deserving of a common
humanity are filtering through to the more enlightened societies and
communities worldwide; that many, if not most of these are among the more
secularly inclined, does not and should not be seen as attitudes toward
a native spirituality being in the decline.
No religion has a monopoly on a person’s sense of spirituality
nor the right to dictate this or that theological agenda, whatever
certain Holy Books have to say on the matter.
As I have said many times on the blogs, I have every
respect for anyone’s sincerely held religious faith just as I would ask them
to respect my right to find my own way in life, love, and
spiritual well-being.
PERSPECTIVES
As age takes its toll of me,
I look back in anger
at schooldays long, long ago,
when I’d dread anyone
should know my secret shame,
as nurtured by societies,
within such as I, a taboo as few
(then) dared call by name, fearing abuse,
left with but Hobson’s choice
Secrets, though will fester,
drive mind-body-spirit
all but mad for suppressing
such love as flowered
within such as I, to which denial
from heart and soul
but falls on deaf ears, until a time
natural instinct insists it no longer ignore
a roar, growing ever louder
The first time I ventured
into the landscape
some religions would condemn
as a unpardonable,
I was trembling for the sheer dread
my God would strike me
dead where I stood,
waiting on a stranger to come, set me free,
if only temporarily, to be ME
We exchanged few words,
that stranger and I,
as we shared a mind-body-spirit
risen to the occasion,
on wings that would be clipped
by certain powers that be
who fear, above all, an individuality
asserting itself, no whim, but once and for all
over the human heart and soul
Time passed, as time will do,
ageing mind-body-spirit
grown weary of showing masks
to a world feeding
on stereotypes, passing off its vanity
as concerns for a humanity
driven by such sure historical agendas
as would see it sign up
to God-fearing behaviour, dogma and faiths
outlawing same sex relationships
Mind-body-spirit, though, asks
more of any society
or religion, increasingly less content
to go free but now and then,
seeking out such resources of its own
as would have it go
mask-free into the world, show its face,
defy any powers that be
hell bent on taking all prejudice and hypocrisy
into yet another deaf-blind century
As generations come and go,
so, too, young people
with minds of their own, less inclined
to be browbeaten,
even during their formative years,
by agenda and/or dogma
as would capture a free mind-body-spirit
with such ideas as may suppress a natural empathy
with a sense of common humanity...
Each to their own sense of right
and wrong, no matter
from where, how or even whom it comes,
entitled not to budge,
but not so as to judge others by standards
adapted to suit themselves,
however well-intentioned they may be
to save humanity from such plots by persons unknown
as likely as not to deny it salvation
To each, though, our own perspective on personal
space,
defining its You-Me-Us, by God’s grace
Copyright R. N. Taber, 2022
Labels: fear, human nature, human spirit, LGBT, life forces, love, personal space, poetry, positive thinking, prejudice, religion, self-awareness, sexuality, society, stereotyping, suspicion