Sword and Shield, a Fight to the Better End

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

[Update (Oct 18 2016): It is more than two years now since my fall that resulted in a badly fractured ankle. The warned me tt the hospital that, given my age, I might never walk again, but I was having none of that, kept religiously to a daily schedule of physiotherapy and can now walk quite well with the aid of a walking stick. Yes, walking is sometimes painful still, but it is a great feeling to be out and about. The prostate cancer, too, remains under control with hormone therapy. So...no worries that I cannot overcome by reflecting on my late mother's words, 'If you worry, you'll die and if you don't worry you'll still die one day so...why worry?' I guess we just have to keep a sense of proportion.]

Since my fall, five weeks ago, I have had to exercise a degree of patience I did not know I possessed. I am always out and about, but have been housebound as the front steps are too many and steep for me to negotiate with crutches. Unable to put any weight on my left foot, a Zimmer frame gives me greater mobility around my flat. It has taken until last week for a CT scan to reveal a fracture in the heel so now I have a cast and must continue hopping around on the Zimmer for at least another five weeks. The heel may mend or it may not. I must wait and see…

I live alone, but friends and my lovely neighbours in the flat below have been a godsend, helping with shopping and everyday tasks around the flat that I cannot do myself. Their support means everything. Even so, there have been moments when I have felt very low; it was at just such a time that I had a spirited debate with Pain and wrote the poem, a kenning.

SWORD AND SHIELD,  A FIGHT TO THE BETTER END

True, I am no friend

but do not mean you harm,

will arrive uninvited

(and most unwelcome)

yet do my best

to make my stay as bearable

as possible,

coaxing mind, body and spirit

to comfort, find peace

I may bring clouds

and wintry days, but always

call on spring flowers

and scents of halcyon days

to brighten dark corners

where you may well cower

from everyday hardship,

and a growing sense of bleaker

times yet to come

True, I am no friend,

but I have the power to make

stronger person of you

if you will only rise above

the worst and make

the best of our time together,

let mind, body and spirit

make peace with even a wretch

the likes of me

As Pain its makeshift sword wields,
so peace and love, lasting shields

Copyright R. N. Taber 2014

Engaging with Mr Hyde

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

Most if not all of us have a dark side, possibly never more memorably illustrated than by Robert Louis Stevenson in his famous novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

What do we see when we look in a mirror? Sometimes, reflecting on how we look exposes much of how we are feeling but cannot articulate at the time; an indefinable anxiety about giving much if anything away.

In my experience, we need to give more away, feel less inhibited about confiding worries, fears, even a sense of split personality that can only fuel both.

On the whole, we all do a good job of camouflage. But is that a good thing? I suspect people would be less likely to crack under the strain of whatever it was causes them to do terrible things if they had felt able to talk to someone who might have been able to help them reach a clearer, less awful perspective on friends, family, colleagues, and life in general.

Having experienced a severe nervous breakdown some 30+ years ago, I remain haunted by how much worse it so easily could have been if I hadn’t received the help and support I needed. This, I should add, was more by accident then design.

Looking back, I can see how feelings of distress fuelled by an emotionally damaged childhood and early manhood erupted as they did. I am only surprised this didn’t occur years earlier. Possibly, compensating very well (too well) for a significant hearing loss and having to conceal the fact that I am gay for many years (when gay relationships were a criminal offence) made me such an expert in the art of hiding my feelings that I could not even make them out myself. Certainly, I could not articulate on them and needed help in flushing them out before I could even begin to come to terms with how I really felt or who I really am.

Traumatic and distressing though my breakdown was, I was one of the lucky ones. 30+ years on, I still suffer bouts of depression from time to time, but these are nothing compared to what happened to me then. Tragically, mental health is still something of a taboo subject which is probably why most people’s conception of mental health issues continues to be naïve if not downright ignorant; more often than not, it is a distorted one. Only those of us who have experienced it and the relatively few people who have supported us on that ghastly roller-coaster ride, have any idea of the damage it does to the human psyche.

So if someone you know starts behaving strangely and out of character, please don’t give up on them. Try to help and support them. (Professional help and support is not always either forthcoming or constructive.) It isn’t always easy being a friend, but friendship means taking the rough with the smooth. Sadly, some people are only interested in the latter; they cannot or will not contend with the other.

This poem is a villanelle.

ENGAGING WITH MR HYDE

Find beasties in mirrors weeping

for those looking fear in the eye,

never truly awake or ever sleeping

Silent as dawn’s stealth creeping

over bedcovers where we lie,

find beasties in mirrors weeping

Werewolves in sheep’s clothing

(human nature knows us by)

never truly awake or ever sleeping

Consorting with gargoyles sweeping

up mistakes and lies we’ll deny,

find beasties in mirrors weeping

Through a lace curtain of empathy,

home truths from which we shy,

never truly awake or ever sleeping

Alter ego, a chameleon peeping

through a roaming glass eye;

find beasties in mirrors weeping,

never truly awake or ever sleeping

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

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]