All lives Matter

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

A reader has no problem with my being gay, but asks why I a gay-interest poetry blog at all, blog given that "Poetry is above bigotry and discrimination, surely?"  I could not agree more. Poetry is, indeed, but many people have other ideas.

Another reader asks why I rarely post any specifically gay-interest poems on that blog now. Well, I'm 75 years-old and fear I have almost run out of bardic steam altogether, having written well over 1000 poems since I started writing up both poetry blogs some ten years ago. At the time, I knew of few gay poets apart from Thom Gunn, and was unable to relate to many of his poems. 

Writing poems is partly creative therapy for me as I have had a running battle with depression all my life. More importantly, though, I wanted to encourage gay men and women living in the kind of homophobic society in which I grew up to feel better and more confident in their sexuality than I did in my early years; feedback suggests there are still plenty of us around the world whose home and/or cultural environment remains as homophobic as when I was a young man. As regular readers will know, I was in my early 30's before I finally emerged from a lonely closet and came out to the world as a gay man.

Although I write few specifically LGBT poems now, many poems that I post on my general blog are simply written with any reader in mind who feels, for whatever reason, something of an outsider. I relate to one particular quote by the novelist James Baldwin, so intensely, it hurts: 

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." 

Having faced up to and defied my own demons, I (naively perhaps)  wanted to encourage others to do the same, not only for their own well-being, but also in the hope that same sex relationships - especially between men - might become less stigmatised and stereotyped around the world. 

Nor is it a world devoid of spirituality. I, personally, have never believed that any religion has a monopoly on spirituality. I don't subscribe to any of the world religions because homophobia is the worst kind of religious hypocrisy. Essentially, they all claim to be about love; God is love. Yet, love is neither as selective or discriminatory as various religious agendas or dogma would have us believe. Love is universal.

I respect a person's religious beliefs, of course I do, but if looks could kill, I would be long dead for being critical of any religion. As I have asked so many times on both blogs, whatever happened to agreeing to differ?

In latter years, I am increasingly drawn to Pantheism, a religious philosophy that sees God as Nature, not its creator. 

Having always nurtured a close relationship with the natural world, it offers me  - as a person as well as a poet - a comfort and vision of life that is far more inspirational that anything to which any world-centred agenda or dogma can come close. It is not for everyone, of course, but it has helped me find myself,  discover and nurture an intimacy with an inner self that might otherwise have remained a complete mystery and left me floundering. I cannot claim to have solved the mystery, of course, even in relation to myself, but attempting to do so has brought me closer that I dared hope; it has been a long journey, often a tough one, not least for exposing my various weaknesses and fears demanding t I face and overcome them; a journey well worth the making, and not over yet. 

It is reassuring to see that many young people are embarking on much the same journey and that at least some societies and communities worldwide are less inclined to stigmatise them for it.

As for its being considered a different, even sinful journey by the many bigots among us, as I have said so ay times on my blogs, our differences do not make us different, only human.

"The curious thing is that I embraced homosexuality with as much joy and delight as I've embraced everything else in my life." Miriam Margolyes

Feedback suggests that many gay readers only read this blog, but please di dip into my general poetry blog from time to time; you may find the archives of either or both blogs worth dipping into also; if you like poetry, that is, and I know not everyone does, nor do I imagine you will like everything I write, possibly not a lot, but if what you read provides food for positive rather than negative thought and feeling...well, what more can a poet ask? 

At the moment, I am trying to compile a new collection for publishing in print and on-line, but I will be thinking of and rooting for you all still. I hope to post a new poem on my general blog at least once a week, so please do drop by; a poem is a poem is a poem, after all, just as a person is a person is a human being, regardless of gender, ethnicity or sexual persuasion.

Take care, everyone, and be sure to nurture a positive mindset, whatever life throws at you.

Back soon, with a poem,

Hugs,

Roger

[Note: The greater part of this post appears on both poetry blogs today.] RT