Poetry as Creative Therapy

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

Readers have been asking why I post poems only to revise them at a later date. Would it not be better to wait until I am fully satisfied with the finished piece before going ahead and sharing it? Well, yes, it would, but I am satisfied with it at the time and want to share it; if I have any reservations, I will delay, but even then, it can be good to share what may only transpire to be the genesis of a poem; I may well make changes to its wording and structure later, but any revisions always try to retain the spirit of the original poem.

While I do my best to interest readers with my poems, I have made no secret of the fact that the blogs are also an important form of creative therapy for me as well. I suspect my recovery from a nervous breakdown many years ago has never (quite) been as complete as I like to think. Moreover, any hangovers from that terrible time may well have been reawakened by my prostate cancer being treated with hormone therapy (Zoladex) since its being first diagnosed in 2012. I'm not complaining, just being pragmatic; I cannot ignore the effect (and influence) health concerns have had on my poetry, so they are relevant to answering the question.

In the early days of hormone therapy, I expressed concern to my consultant that it was making me feel frightened a lot of the time, and was also affecting my thought processes, especially my memory. I was assured these were side-effects of the treatment. Over subsequent years, I have learned to deal with them, but if I though I was winning the battle, I could not have been more wrong.

The sense of creeping fear leaves me from time to time, often for very prolonged periods, although it has returned with a vengeance since the coronavirus pandemic struck. However, memory loss and disorganised thought processes have dogged me from the start. Not helpful for a wannabe poet, I hear you say, and you would be right. I have struggled with writing poems (and fiction) for some years now, probably before I even started the blog, but hadn’t got the measure of my shortcomings.

I gave up on the fiction as no publishers were interested. Even so, working with words has been a lifesaver. Without the blogs, I suspect I would have given up on myself in the early days of my prostate cancer. Some days are a nightmare, not least because I forget the meaning of words with which I have been familiar most of my life and need to keep looking them up to make sure I am using them correctly. At the same time, organizing my thoughts into poem mode can take days, and that’s before I have to start wrestling with words and meaning. Completing both processes encourages me to continue, not only writing poetry but also getting ready to face another day.

My life was so different before either the prostate cancer or a bad fall in about 2012 when I fractured my left ankle and have had a mobility problem ever since, especially now I am in my mid-seventies. I used to enjoy walking for hours in the countryside and parks, long cliff walks by the sea, wherever the whim and might take me. Similarly, I used to love exploring art galleries and museums etc. and I miss all that because you can be sure that either prostate cancer or Foot will have other ideas... 😉

I am not making excuses for my poetry not always being up to the mark, simply telling it how it is and attempting to answer the question as to why I post poems only to revise them at a later date. I have always enjoyed writing poetry, nor just by way of creative therapy either. My first published poem appeared in my secondary school magazine when I was still only 11 years-old. I’ve never thought of myself as an especially good poet, but hope what some of my poems have to say will continue to resonate with some readers even after the Grim Reaper comes calling.

Readers often ask why I have an entry on Wikipedia. I didn’t know myself for a long time, but it appears it is because I also write gay-interest poetry, and there is little enough of it about. Gay poets, like gay novelists, have good reason to want to try and correct the many misperceptions many people have about gay people, the fake news and misleading stereotypes that haunt some of us all our lives.

Rightly or wrongly, I grew up in a family that gave a very vulnerable fourteen years-old Roger the impression they had as low an opinion of same sex relationships as many if not most people in those days. Consequently, I remained in the proverbial closet until my early thirties; even then, it would take a nervous breakdown - that had been simmering away in me like an awakening volcano - to eventually set me on a course that would not only restore a flagging self-confidence, but also result in my emerging from the closet, ready at last to start looking the world in the eye as a gay man. Oh, I made lots of mistakes along the way, and regret them all, especially where I may well inadvertently have hurt other people’s feelings.

Enough of all that, hope you won’t think I have strayed too far from the point I was originally trying to, make; few points worth making can be made in a few words.

Take care, folks, and keep well,

HUGS,

Roger 

PS In spite or (or because of) everything I’ve said, I do follow my own advice. I wake up each morning feeling physically sick for having to get through another day... BUT... by the time I have given myself a pep talk, got dressed and had some breakfast...YES, the positive mindset is already ticking over nicely, and invariable sees me through until bed-time... if only just, sometimes. 😁

 

Drumming up Raison d'être OR Music to the Ear

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

Still stressed out here, but where there's stress, there may well be - invariably so, in my case - a poem attempting to relieve it ...

Now, regular readers will know that I subscribe to no religion; the closest I identify with any sense of a God is as a philosophy that turns on nature rather than dogma which has, in turn, led me to identify closely with pantheism. 

My Religious Education teacher at secondary school once asked my fifth form class to put our hands up if we believed in God. A forest of hands shot up to confirm that, yes, most of the class did. Only a few of us kept hands on desks. One by one we were asked why we didn't believe in God. While most  simply shrugged and looked increasingly embarrassed, somehow found the nerve to insist that I could not imagine a personified God and saw no reason to take the word of any religious text since I saw religion as being one of the most divisive forces in world history. (I had recently read something along those lines and instantly empathised with the author.) To my surprise and relief, I was not taken to task for presuming to differ. Instead, the teacher asked me if I believe in nature, to which I managed a positive "Yes, sir!" 

"Then you are a pantheist, Taber," the teacher said, and went on to try and explain pantheism to the whole class. Someone asked if pantheism was a sin. "Not exactly," said the teacher, "because it does not deny the existence of God, only of God as an individual.The pantheist sees God as an expression of everything in the universe, especially nature; it is a philosophy as opposed to a Faith. A person's faith may well consider pantheism a sacrilege, but that is only according to its dogma. Whether we accept or reject any dogma, on whatever grounds, is entirely up to the individual. Taber's choosing to reject it, doesn't mean he is right or wrong any more than the rest of us who choose to accept it. Either way, attributing a meaning to God that is meaningful to the inner self will, hopefully, sustain us all our lives and beyond. Now, to move on ..."

I am paraphrasing in part, but this has to be more than simply the gist because those words were destined to remain in my head for the next sixty years. (I will be 75 in December)

Hopefully, I have also answered the question recently emailed me by a reader who  is offended by  my commenting - on more than one occasion - that religion does not have a monopoly on spirituality. The latter, this reader insists, 'requires a Belief in God as laid down by Holy Books.'

What can I say? I can only suggest we agree to differ, especially as he (or she) also has some nice things to say about my poetry, and is clearly a regular visitor to this blog.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

DRUMMING UP RAISON D'ÊTRE or MUSIC TO THE EAR

I smell autumn,

even as sounds of summer

drift by my window

on a gentle, southerly breeze;

Earth Mother

at my ear, ever warning me

against despair;

each season's heart beating out

the slow-quick-slow

rhythms of any given life span

on drums across the world

I spot swallows,

aware their time has come again

to elude winter's bite

before it's too late to take wing

for kinder climes,

taking their cue (invariably)

from a north wind

now plucking, now tearing leaves

from nesting trees,

like a bailiff serving due notice

to quit, little if any reprieve

Elderly couples,

grandchildren skipping alongside

mums pushing prams,

all pause to watch the swallows,

all noise and silence

asking a what-where-why 

mentoring humankind,

listening out for answers in the wind

that are a blur on the ear

manifesting itself in sciences, arts,

and philosophies of religion

Gone, the swallows.

out of sight, out of mind, like friends

who have moved away,

promising to have us come and stay

'one of these days';

loneliness, a snowfall of the heart

on mind-body-spirit;

Memory, keeping a weather eye open 

for swallows in the course

of its seeking answers to questions

posed by past-present-future

Time passes, winter 

melts into spring, swallows returning;

an invitation out of the blue

from friends moved away, anxious

to avoid speculation;

nature, left sleeping on sounds-smells

of other seasons

by way of its nurturing more life forms;

humanity, left asking

of arts and sciences such proof of life

as might nurture raison d'être

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2019; 2020

Single, and Growing Old OR As Good as it Gets

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

Readers sometimes contact me and ask me how I manage to stay positive. So am posting this poem by way of reply. I will be 75 later this year, need a walking stick following a bad fall in 2011 and  have prostate cancer which has been treated with hormone therapy, also since 2011, so am constantly needing use the loo, plus I have some arthritis in my bad leg and in my neck.

I have done battle with depression all my life, even as a child. It may well be a complete stranger to many people having to contend with the physical, emotional and economic consequences of the Covid-19 coronavirus, but it and I are old adversaries. 

For years, I lost more battles with the BIG D than I won until a GP said he had no problem with patients who suffered from depression staying on an antidepressant; in the past, I had taken them until I felt better and then come off them... until the next time. What works for one person may well not work for another, of course, but I tried this approach and have not had a serious bout of depression since. 

Regular readers will know that, looking back to early January, I can now see that I had all the symptoms of what was almost certainly a milder version of the C-19 virus even if it did not feel 'mild' at the time. But it was winter, the time of colds and flu and there was little if any talk of a pandemic then. I simply put it down to a bad cold and stayed indoors. Yes, I am finding the C-19 pandemic very hard to deal with on a daily basis, but mostly due to the necessity for social distancing, not seeing friends and having to avoid public transport (I don't have car) especially as I live alone. 

Obviously, there are many people a lot worse off than me, but I can empathise with anyone who has difficulty trying to look on the bright side of life.  Growing old, for start, is definitely no picnic, but it’s only fair to point out that the same can be said of life in general. Some people in some parts of the world have a relatively easy life compared with those in other parts; some individuals appear to sail through life where others constantly find themselves swimming against an unremitting tide.

“How do you cope?” I once asked a young disabled friend some years ago. “Mind over matter,” he replied, “Think good, feel good,” he added with wry grin, and this from someone in pain 24/7. It was sound advice, and I make a point of following it. 

On bad days, the love of those closest to me, past and present, helps me through any pain and subsequent, frustration, depression ... whatever. I only wish I had done likewise back in 1979 before I suffered a mental breakdown and attempted suicide. Even so, I am convinced it was love that saved me then, and sustains me now, even though I live alone and have no partner. (I only had a partner for a short time, and that was many years ago although our feelings for each other continue to sustain me just as they did before he was killed in a road accident abroad.) As a result of my suicide attempt, I was unconscious for a good 35 hours, and I seem to recall his and my mother's voice calling me back. Both, long dead. Call it a fantasy if you like, but even the doctors said I am lucky to be alive ...

“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Winston Churchill (My Early Life, 1874-1904)  

  

SINGLE, AND GROWING OLD or  AS GOOD AS IT GETS

Can’t get out and about

too easily now, a walking stick
needing to take the strain

when the rest of me lets me down,
and that’s as good as it gets

Can’t hear or see as well

as I could not so very long ago

but hearing aids and specs

get me by (now, wherever did I put

the darn things...?

New technology remains

a mystery not designed for old folks

who struggle to master

even the basics, a failing memory

chasing P-I-N or password

Growing old, no easy task,

gets harder by the day, yet a feeling

for life, love. and nature

inspires, and more than gets me by, 

cur for mind-body-spirit 

I draw upon all the love
that has seen me through the years
(in all its shapes and forms)
until it all but mends this poor frame,
and that's as good as it gets

Copyright R. N. Taber 2018; 2020

[Note: Following several requests from gay-friendly straight readers, I have also published this post/ poem on my gay-interest blog; feedback has long since confirmed that many if not most of its readers do not dip into both blogs.]