Blueprint for Mornings-After-a-One-Night Stand

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

A less than gay-friendly straight reader writes,"You talk a lot about a common humanity on your blog, but what has any hot-blooded heterosexual have in common with gays?"

Over the past ten years, I have often wondered whether to post a poem on either or both blogs; this one first appeared on my gay-interest blog in 2011. At the time,there was an emphasis in the popular press on a perceived promiscuity on the part of gay men.

I dare say most of us have enjoyed a one-night stand or two...or three... or more in our lives. The sad thing is it’s more often the lows (a hangover even?) of the morning after that we remember rather than the highs of the night before. Gay or straight, it makes no difference. There’s nothing quite like that wistful morning-after feeling...not quite regret, but not quite resembling any feel-good factor either.

Enjoy, but play safe out there. (Yes, with medication, people can live with HIV-AIDS for years longer now, but who wants that hanging over them if it can be avoided?)

BLUEPRINT FOR MORNINGS-AFTER-A-ONE-NIGHT STAND

Slowly descending ceiling stills,
walls settle and squat,
all the colours of night-clamour
dissemble into a stale dawn
glimpsed through ragged curtains
at a weary window

Eyes peering, Mind stretching,
Body smoothing over cracks
in its cradle, summoning succour
from a worldly benevolence
that's stinging, oh, but so sweetly
at some leafy breast

Tears, oozing from a breathless
dreaming on this marble slab
of rude awakening, dispelling
any fleeting trust that today
might (just might) carry us along
on cosy kitchen sounds

Together, we saw a candle flare
in the darkness of our night.
Ah, but it was a heavenly light!
Yet, better by far to leave us
sleeping, oh, but so sweetly there

than revisit its shadows

Copyright R. N. Taber 2001

[Note: This poem has been revised from an earlier version that appears in Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001.]