A Poet's Blog: Roger N.Taber shares his thoughts & poems...

Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian and poet-novelist.- "Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, Sexuality ... these are but parts of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to critical emails about my poetry. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

Name:
Location: London, United Kingdom

Sadly, a bad fall in 2012 has left me with a mobility problem, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year hasn't helped, but I get out and about with my trusty walking stick as much as I can, take each day as it comes and try to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life. Many of my poems reflect the need to nurture a positive-thinking mindset whatever life throws at us.

Sunday, 16 March 2014

Bitter Harvest


In reality, there is no such thing as easy money. Even a huge lottery win is rarely roses all the way and more often than not leaves a trail of heartbreak. Someone recently mentioned that betting is easy money (he had just won £50 on a horse.) Ah, but how many bets had he lost over years, I wondered? Even so, I resisted the temptation to ask and risk throwing cold water on an old man’s elation.

Many years ago, during a period of mental illness, I became addicted to fruit machines and probably wasted thousands of pounds over a period of several years. Fortunately, I am cured now and have a life. Gambling is no less addictive than drugs, smoking or alcohol. It can destroy people and their families. At the time, I was caught up in the protracted aftermath of a nervous breakdown. That’s when addiction strikes, when we’re at our most vulnerable. It can happen to anyone. So never give up on an addict, yeah? The challenge is trying to prevent addicts giving up on themselves.

It is an appalling indictment on contemporary society, especially given the stresses and strains of modern living, that there are relatively few rehabilitation centres or other avenues of help for addicts or those less obviously in the grip of mental illness. They may be the last to admit, it but they need friends and family to stand by them and be willing to go that last mile.

If you know an addict (drugs, gambling, whatever) please, please, be there for them. You won’t get much if anything by way of thanks, but no one can beat addiction without support from someone who cares that they should. Sometimes, yes, it’s a losing battle for everyone concerned, but we have to try…for all our sakes.

Did I say it was easy?

Every day, I hear someone say in the street, media, library, bus or train...words to the effect that there’s ‘easy’ money for the taking if we only play our cards right.  No, I don’t think so, not unless those 'cards' happen to be in sync with the kinder or at least more responsible elements of mind-body-spirit.

BITTER HARVEST

Public faces reaping
more respect than many
have earned the right
to expect in modern times;
paper tigers wandering
corridors of power, seeking
an easy prey, a nose
for more; bits and pieces,
(when put together)
likely to create an incomplete
jigsaw 

People come and go,
all history in the making,
fortunes for the taking;
winners, losers,
gamblers paying respects
to palaces of pleasure,
Stock Exchanges,
After Hours bars ringing
with a cacophony
of celebration, despair,
whatever...

Worldwide, trails
like snails’ slime tracking
the best and worst
of us, no discrimination;
looking to the future,
(things sure to get better)
Family of Man living
up to old myths, bearing
fruits to feed a world 
last observed harvesting 
lemon trees

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2014

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]


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Wednesday, 29 February 2012

Profile of a Hotshot

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

For a minority of young people, being in a gang is exciting, even glamorous; a life of crime, even violence, brings them local street cred. For some, too, it provides a sense of belonging that, for various reasons, may be lacking at home; invariably, they discover soon enough how seriously flawed this simplistic perspective can be, paying for their mistakes with prison or worse...

There is no excuse for gang crime. A prevailing irony and tragedy lies in the fact that, given an opportunity, most gang members have a positive contribution to make in the very society that condemns them.

There are two sides to every divide and both need to find a way to be reconciled. Society needs to ask itself where it is failing some young people to drive them into a gang culture; what does a gang offer them that it cannot, and why can’t it?

For their part, gang members need to ask themselves what they really want from life and make a bigger effort to find it; they certainly won’t find it by using weapons, shooting drugs or compensating for their own fears by terrorising others. The chances are the false security of being part of a gang, and the price they must pay for exercising their contempt for society's better values, will come back to haunt them in its prisons, those universities of crime that major in the art of self-delusion.

Meanwhile, the majority of decent young people remain under threat of being stereotyped by a mindless minority.
  
PROFILE OF A HOTSHOT

We called ourselves the Hotshots,
my gang and me

Upholding the right to use a gun,
in our constitution

We’d pick fights on street corners
and raid stores

If some little old lady or a war vet
in the way…too bad

We were the Hotshots, graduated
from school to streets

No one could touch us because we
had youth on our side

Looks, girls, designer gear and guns
made us invincible

We even hit prime time News once
(fame at last)

Then a hotshot turned good citizen
and grassed us up

Disbanded now, gone to this prison
or that graveyard

Me, once Mr Fox, now chickenfeed
among old lags

We were the Hotshots, thought guns
were cool

[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]

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Friday, 17 February 2012

John Bull's Midnight Garden

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

Today’s first poem last appeared on the blog in 2008. Now, I have written several anti-drugs poems and reader ‘Marcel P’ has asked me to repeat this one ‘as a warning to a close friend.’ I only hope he makes sure his friend reads it.  I have added the second poem for good measure.

Drug abuse destroys lives so why are there relatively few rehab centres available, even in big cities like London? Why isn’t there more high profile anti-drugs promotion?

Drug addicts need help, not condemnation. Apart from young people who are targeted by unscrupulous drug pushers, there are others (all ages) who turn to drugs because they cannot cope with the pressures of everyday life. It isn’t long before they find themselves trapped in a vicious spiral of desperation and despair.  

Even so-called ‘soft’ drugs such as cannabis are not without their dangers. Smoking weed can help a person relax, but if he or she is smoking because they cannot cope with certain pressures, the chances are it won’t be long before they will try something stronger, always convinced they are not vulnerable to addiction...

Everyone’s body chemistry is different; take ‘designer’ drugs like ecstasy; for example one person’s high, another’s death. Yes, the latter is rare, but is it worth taking the chance? Besides, many of these drugs have not been around long enough for full research to be done into their long-term effects on mind and body. 

What’s that you say> It’s my life and I’ll live it how I want?  Fair enough, except drug abuse doesn’t only ruin an addict’s life but the lives of his or her family and friends too.

So be careful out there, yeah? If you can’t cope, for whatever reason, ask for help, don’t take the drugs route.

There is no shame in asking for help, only common sense.

JOHN BULL’S MIDNIGHT GARDEN

Blades of grass dipped in moonlight,
Old Man winking mischievously
at shadows chasing their own tails
across number ten’s garden;
Lights in a window peeking between
chinks in closed curtains, envious
of a night left in peace to play without
fear of interruption

Beyond the wall, a screech of tyres
leaves someone’s child dead,
wearing pretty ribbons of moonlight
dipped in a druggie’s blood;
Old Man pointing the finger of blame
at shadows chasing their own tails
from the garden of number ten,
preferring to be left in peace without
fear of interruption

Behind the Rehab Centre, closed down
because of local residents objecting,
a desperate company sniffing, injecting,
clutching at straws in a sea of moonlight
flooding the garden of number ten;
Old Man takes to hiding behind clouds
rather than watch shadows made to chase
their own tails where no peace without
fear of interruption

[From: Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2007]

CHARYBDIS MON AMOUR

Whirlpool

Anguish, mirrored
in eddies of shrapnel light;
Pain, caught fast
in a grip of mute supplication;
Loneliness, laid bare
in a mad rape

Round, round, this raving soul
chases its own dear folly

Life, long since perjured
for roller coaster thrills;
Love, all scratched
and bleeding after spills,
spread-eagled
on a cross

Lord, have mercy
on us

No screaming brakes
at Salvation’s door
left ajar;
Nor one kind echo
in the blind
drop

[From: Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001]


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