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 6 April 2014

A Short History of the Human Race


2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1. While it is only right that we should remember all those who fought and died for world peace along with millions of unsung others caught up in the conflict one way or another, we should perhaps reflect upon how various socio-cultural-religious divides have caused conflicts through the ages, and continue to do so.

If wars are all about winning the peace, remembering that has to be making sure peace prevails, surely? Or what has it all been for, apart from killing innocent people, greasing the palms of arms dealers, promoting political rhetoric and profiling humankind’s inhumanity towards its own? [World leaders of all socio-cultural-religious persuasions, please note.]

When will they every learn? When we ever learn...?

This poem is a villanelle.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE

Coursing centuries,
blood of angry ancestors
cancerous war cries

Wherever they rise,
venom of our adversaries
coursing centuries

Kingdoms, dynasties,
playgrounds for predators’
cancerous war cries

A pot-pourri of lies
camouflaged in scriptures
coursing centuries

Socio-political policies
(sovereign ears and eyes)
cancerous war cries

Drawing on prejudice’s
bottomless well of tears;
coursing centuries,
cancerous war cries


Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

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Thursday 3 April 2014

Lines on a Carthorse


I wonder...how many of us pause every now and then to look at something (or someone) and see something (or someone) else?

Photo (Internet)

LINES ON A CARTHORSE

Green patch, bursts of sunshine,
retired carthorse munching
contentedly away at a spread
of dandelions

Light breeze in a solitary ash
washing down a dusty heart
with tactile thoughts inclined
to haunt like romantic songs
played on your guitar dedicated
to the pair of us, could well
be now, fancying that I glimpse
a lock of red hair at the edge
of a teasing, passing cloud whose
oh, so-familiar ears, eyes,
nose, lips, turned to another

I didn’t see what was happening,
lost sight of listening, forgot 
to look at what I saw, mistook hazy
infringements of personal space
for a lazy contentment, happiness
unaffected by the world beyond
that perimeter fence I constructed
with loving care, either assuming
we'd want the same things or maybe
too scared to ask, unknowingly
afraid of getting it wrong, ending
up alone

Retired carthorse, last seen munching
on dandelions by a solitary walker
shot down in a green patch by bursts
of sunshine


Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2010

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in Observing Life, Anchor Books [Forward Press] 2000 and The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004; revised version appears in CC & D poetry magazine, Scars Publications, U S., 2010.]





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Wednesday 19 March 2014

Anatomy of Chaos

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

We may not be rich, but even those of us blessed with life’s simpler, everyday comforts need to count our blessings whenever, from time to time, they may seem somewhat thin on the ground. 

Millions of people worldwide are struggling to survive in appalling conditions; floods, drought, famine, lack of clean drinking water, overcrowded refugee camps, extreme poverty, war…We may catch glimpses of these on TV and spare them a thought, only to go on and watch a movie, fun quiz, chat show or whatever…

There is no point in feeling guilty, just very fortunate, and if awareness of the world’s ills does not help us keep a sense of proportion, it damn well should.

ANATOMY OF CHAOS 

Carpet stains
greeting the dawn,
yawning
away with bare feet,
flip-flops,
mouths dripping
coffee,
cornflakes, butter
on toast…
chair legs banging on
about
how chaos rules
OK

Carpet stains,
epitome of a life
enjoyed,
fibre heart strings
singing along
with garden birds,
grasshoppers,
teenage rock moves
and ma
performing a star
turn
at the kitchen
sink

Carpet stains,
alive, but only just;
sunset
soaking its fibres
with shades
of red and yellow,
like autumn
saying its goodbyes
to faces
at windows looking
for ways
to make the best 
of things

Carpet stains,
put to bed with wine
and candles,
left to soak up
evidence
of home comforts,
world politics
redirecting its refugees
via short-cuts
to Paradise Road,
splinters
of broken glass
overlooked

There will be blood...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2014

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Tuesday 18 March 2014

Systems Failure OR Oh, But If...

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

Information technology is a wonderful thing although I suspect it is leaving me behind, but at least I can read, write, wrestle fairly successfully with numbers and don’t need a computer to write a poem in my head…

Oh, and yes, I can go into common sense mode with ease as well. [Whatever happened to that plain, old-fashioned common sense upon which world societies once turned?]

Nowadays, I suspect we get our priorities if not wrong, exactly, then muddled to say the least. Technology must take its share of the blame. More of us are relying on it to the extent that we are getting lazy about thinking for ourselves. Worse, some people actually prefer social networks to meeting up and chatting face to face with people and friends.  (Is it any wonder social and interpersonal skills are going much the same way as common sense?)

No, I am not knocking new technology, but we should remain alert to the truism, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. Information technology, for all its wonders, remains vulnerable to human input.

The Scottish Robert Burns expressed it well in his own dialect, which more or less translates as 'the best laid plans of mice and men are apt to go awry.'


 “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” - Robert Burns (1759-1796)

SYSTEMS FAILURE or OH, BUT IF...

If…
life is about humility,
love a question
of values, democracy 
a state of mind, (freedom)
so…what?

If…
a body, becomes numb,
(even dumb)
behind twitching curtains
of acid rain, what aid for us
in IT?

If…
to rummage e-archives
for inspiration,
we amateur philosophers
are driven, what if we haven’t
a clue?

So…
we could ask a computer
what IT's all about,
but don’t forget garbage in,
garbage out, may well see us
shut down

Copyright R. N. Taber 2000; 2014

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appeared in The Language of Life, Poetry Today (Forward Press) 2000 and subsequently in Love And Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001.]


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Monday 17 March 2014

Reflections on the Darker Side of Human Nature

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

[Update (Sept 4, 2016) A perceptible rise in hate crime against EU and other migrants in parts of the UK since the Brexit vote is as disturbing as it is appalling; another modern tragedy perpetrated by a significant but vocal minority along with racism and homophobia. Even intolerance of elderly and disabled people is not unheard of in this sorry world of ours While some prejudices are ingrained in certain socio-cultural-religious conventions, others merely service a warped ego; all need to be weeded out, and will be, but not in my lifetime, I fear.]

From time to time (or perhaps more often these days?) stress rears its ugly head and tempers become frayed. We can try and recognise the signs and stay calm, but that's easier said than done. 

Too often, we say things we don’t mean in a temper or, if we do mean them, we probably shouldn’t have said them. If the worst comes to the worst, all we can do is apologise and try and make peace. As my late mother used to say, if your head is too big to apologise, your mind is too small for it.

With some people, of course, the damage done is irreparable but that isn’t always a bad thing. Having let rip with anger, it can sometimes bring a welcome sense of relief, especially when it targets those among us with whom it is impossible to talk things through. If it gives the person with whom we have lost our temper food for thought, so much the better and we should accept any genuine olive branch gracefully. However, some people are too self-centred to concede that it takes two to make a quarrel and two to make it up. They prefer to hug their grievances to them, relating them to all and sundry as a means to gaining an invariably undeserved sympathy vote.

By the way, I speak from personal experience. When I was younger I would put up with ‘friends’ (and family) treating me badly because I knew they didn’t necessarily mean it. Even so, most would run a mile rather than sit down and talk things through. Once I turned sixty, I decided life is too short and time too precious to waste on people like that.


“Angry people are not always wise.” - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

This poem is kenning.

REFLECTIONS ON THE DARKER SIDE OF HUMAN NATURE 

I watch you, though from shadows,
and you know I am there yet choose
to ignore me, hoping I will go away
but it’s my choice to stay, observe
the way you walk, talk, seeing how
you react to what others do or say,
assessing your hurt by scratch marks
of the queerest designs you pass off
as laughter lines

I follow you about wherever you go
and you would be rid of my company
yet dare not face me with all the facts
I have gleaned over years of grooming
you for my own ends. Any resistance
is futile, though I grow apprehensive
when you mix with others who would
usurp my place, take you for their own,
share love’s crown

Years pass, and now we walk together
and you dare not say ‘no’ to passing
into the shadows with me for have I not
watched over you as I would a child?
Where can the light of the world take us
but among regrets and betrayal, along
tracks made by paper tigers that belong
here, where only leafy skies have shed
tears for centuries

I hold the hand writing history’s next page,
and am called Rage

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2018

[Note: This poem first appears under the title 'The Savage' in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010; rev. title 5/18]

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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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Saturday 15 March 2014

My Friends, The Trees


Sometimes it can feel as if our world has come to an end or is closing down on us like the curtain on a Shakespearean tragedy.  

I have often felt that way, even as a child (when no one took depression in children very seriously if at all) and have spent the best part of a lifetime finding ways of restoring a view of life and self that gives rise to optimism rather than pessimism.

Creative therapy (writing) and reading have played a vital part in my battle to beat depression, but it is nature that has proved my salvation.  While not even the finest arts can copy it, a troubled mind, body, and spirit can do far, far, worse than try. So it has been with mine since my partner died even though we were together but a few years and it was a long time ago. My mother’s death, too, affected me deeply. 

Yet, the trees remain, the same trees we walked among, talked among, and rested among to enjoy leafy kaleidoscopes and create our own; trees now bursting with life, now all but dying only to thrive again according to time and season. Such is the stoicism of nature from which the human body-mind-spirit can take heart if it will but pause long enough to look and see, listen and learn…

MY FRIENDS, THE TREES

I never felt so alone
as once you were gone,
drab days stretching
on and on like dirt tracks
leading nowhere
but deeper into woodlands
where no sun shining,
birds singing or rabbits
teasing the eye

Then a day came, 
long after you were gone,
I chanced to spot
a chick sparrow fly the nest,
hover uncertainly,
fledgling wings in a flap,
but only briefly
before soaring up, up,
and away 

I followed its flight,
spotted a trickle of sunlight
bursting through trees
whose spring leaves
dripped rainbows on the eye,
restoring colour 
to a world left colourless 
since you painted me
out of it

Suddenly, the inner ear 
hears once more, inner eye
can see again,
empty heart starting to fill
(if slowly) with joys 
of spring, reawakening
happier times, 
trying out heart strings
and retuning 

Oh, but less lonely now,
befriended by trees, lifted
by ages-old tales
of love and peace, songs
celebrating life,
poems reflecting that death
must wait its turn
while we relish the thrill
of first flight

Sparrow flies into tree,
possibly same bird, same tree,
but not the same me, 
loath to leave my friends,
the trees, yet anxious
as they to remind the world 
it’s spring, 
body, mind, and spirit 
overflowing

Copyright R. N. Taber 2014

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