Hello again, from London UK

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

Hello again, everyone, from London UK,

Sorry, no poem today, but will try and compose a new one soon. I've has traumatic few days and only just rediscovering a sense of normality.. Last week, I found myself locked out of the computer  by Microsoft. As I have preferred to use Google for many years, I had no recollection of the information I was being asked to input. Several times, my screen told me to "try again tomorrow", but the situation persisted , so I had to take the pc into a local store; I needed to save the data so it was a few days before I was able to collect it, in good working order but operational changes to which I have yet to become accustomed.

Years of hormone therapy for the prostate cancer have played havoc with my thought processes and also left me prone to panic, but lots of herbal tea and doing word puzzles helped keep me on an even(ish) keel. I would have coped much better when I was younger (will be 77 later this year), but I suspect that old age as well as the hormone therapy haven't helped the ole thought processes.😉

I had bought a laptop sometime ago, so managed to get it up and running- with a lot of help from my friend Graham (who created the videos where I read poems on YouTube) but getting used to anything new, takes me awhile these days. Problems with setting it up have now been (hopefully) solved and today I collected my pc from the local store.

This pc, too, has significantly different features with which will take me awhile to become comfortable, but (hopefully) I will be up to the challenges ahead. Again, another friend, Richard, kindly set it up for me as I have forgotten much of what I ever knew about setting up computers!😀

So, I am all set to go again, engage with you all and invite you to to (hopefully) enjoy my poems, both on regular posts and in the blog archives.

Although I have always loved writing up the blog and composing poems, I haven't the words to describe just how much the latter, especially, has helped me through the pandemic. So, a BIG thank you to you all for staying in touch. Sadly, we are not over the pandemic just yet, but let's all hope we are at least over the worst of it and there aren't too many Covid variants out there just waiting to pounce. I am still wearing a face mask in shops, on busy thoroughfares and public transport even tough we are no longer legally obliged to here in England; I may be in a minority, but that has never bothered me...😉 Better safe than sorry, I say...

I hope to be back real soon with a poem, but suspect it may take me longer than a younger version of yours truly, to get used to all the changes associated with finding files and logging on etc. 

Take care care, stay safe and keep well, dear readers, and remember to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life, no matter how it may drive you up the proverbial wall... as so often happens to us all from time to time😉 Should you ever feel unable to cope, never hold back from asking friends for help; it shows that mind-body-spirit knows best even when we don't... as I have discovered time and again over many years, and done my nest to reciprocate.

Love 'n' Hugs,

Roger

Olympic Games OR Old Gods, New Gods, and the Rest of Us

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

[Update (July 21, 2016): Congratulations to Team GB and everyone taking part in the Rio Olympics. As for those nasty people who targeted Tom Daley for homophobic abuse, I can only echo J. K. Rowling; I am not sure which is more offensive, the stupidity or the spite. Some religious groups especially need to get real; their founders would be appalled. I do not subscribe to any religion, not least because I find it too divisive and closed-minded where religion should be the very opposite, acknowledging that our differences neither put us in the wrong nor make us different, simply human. Moreover, I came to this conclusion before I realised I am gay. One of my You Tube videos makes the same point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrTjc2373IU  Needless to say, I received a number of offensive emails after posting it.]

Now, leaders of every society like to play games with its citizens and today’s poem was written in 2000; it has nothing (directly) to do with the Olympic Games. Even so, here’s wishing good luck to everyone participating in the Rio Olympics and upholding humankind’s finer qualities of fair competition and mutual respect among winners and losers alike. To win a medal is, of course, a wonderful achievement, but as wonderful if not more so is the thrill of taking part, an incomparable memory to share and treasure over a lifetime.

If the poem invokes a sense of society falling into moral and political well as economic decay, hopefully the feeling rarely lasts; it only takes events that embrace the human spirit of the Olympic Games to raise our hopes once more and make us realise there is (far) more to life than any judgmental take on it will ever suggest.

Even so, let's not forget how Greek mythology would have us believe the old gods got up to all sorts of mischief on Olympus; all work and no play…

Mount Olympus, Greece

OLYMPIC GAMES or OLD GODS, NEW GODS, AND THE REST OF US

What will be, will be,

in this century as others gone before;

wealth and poverty, a sick lottery

of love and hate, peace and war invariably

played out by tin gods with humankind

and everything to play for, bearing in mind

(of course) that who dares wins,

no matter what their sins, and losers

will always cast the first stones

before they will admit being taken in

by substitute icons

Olympus, alive and well on Capitol Hill,

humanity, in free fall…

Copyright R. N. Taber 2001; 2016

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised and an alternative title added (2016) since it first appeared in Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001; rev. ed. in –format in preparation.]