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 21 December 2014

Christmas Revisited


Now, every year, for many years, I have written a Poem for Christmas that I send to friends instead of a Christmas card.  They are rarely if even conventional Christmas poems, not least because I am not religious person, just like to keep in touch with people and cards are so commercial at a time when this should be the least of our concerns, and many people can’t really afford them anyway. I used to send cards just to keep in touch and let people know I was thinking of them, but nowadays we have e-mail…

Why do I write a Poem for Christmas at all? Well, regular readers will know that, although I am not religious, I like to think I have a strong sense of spirituality. Only, I find it in nature rather than any religion, especially as religions are so divisive. (We should respect different points of view, not attack them.) Born on the winter solstice, I dare say there is an element of pagan in me too.

For many people, their religion is a club, ‘Members Only’; it takes the spirit of religion to reach out to non-members too. Don't get me wrong. I respect religious points of view, simply cannot enter into them.

So here is my Poem for Christmas, 2014. Whoever and wherever you are, and whatever your Belief or non-Belief, it comes to you in the spirit of Love and Peace.

CHRISTMAS REVISITED

Clouds, like baggage
on a tramp’s back trudging the sky;
doom-gloom of winter
threatening to extinguish flames
at a roaring hearth,
humanity's way of creating shades 
of kindness

Ghosts, wistfully engaging
in a pillow fight in remembrance
of a Santa Claus
that betrayed every trust created
to reassure us
with mockery of the cruellest blasts
of winter

Snow, like white feathers
heaping accusations on doorsteps
and at windows
where humankind flirts with blame
long enough be acquitted
by cosy fantasies fuelling conscience
in home fires

Tramp in the sky falters
under a load growing heavier, Apollo
pondering whether or not
to join the pillow fighters, kill off
the best snowmen,
leave Christmas to the complacency
of religion  

Frost on the glass
creating a kaleidoscope of life’s pain
and pleasures, urging us
to dwell on the latter, believe
in happiness in spite
of a sorry world’s worst misgivings
about Christmas

Doom-gloom of winter
ever threatened by the fiercer flames
of a roaring hearth,
humanity's way of creating shades
of kindness to pass on
to the next generation in the spirit
of Christmas

Copyright R. N. Taber 2014





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Friday 7 November 2014

Christmas, Glossing Over Missed Opportunities


At this time of year, people often tell me they are so looking forward to Christmas because they see it as a reason for celebration and renewal, usually more in a temporal than religious sense, as if Christmas will make everything bad in their lives so much better, keeping up the momentum until New Year, and then…?

Too often, the bubble of make-believe is burst soon enough as January arrives with all the indifference to human potential of a Grim Reaper.

We may not be altogether masters of our own fate, but life is what we make it. Mind and body may well be subject to external influences, sometimes of the worst kind, but the human spirit is better than that, and deserves to be given its head. The inner self knows us better than we think we know ourselves, and more of us need to listen rather than turn a deaf ear in favour of false (if attractive) promises the world often makes but has no intention of keeping.

Christmas, like all religious festivals is too often seen as signposting a sanctuary or at least some respite or escape from the harsher elements of life threatening to overwhelm us. Rarely, in my experience, will religion remove the threat for long; we need to build on the spirit and spirituality of peace and love (religion may have its share of both, but no monopoly), not be afraid to ask for help, and make a better life for ourselves on terms we will not flinch from meeting, no matter whether they are unacceptable to those who think they know us better than we know ourselves.

CHRISTMAS, GLOSSING OVER MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Rain soaking the shirt, jeans;
body responding freely
to Earth Mother’s call to live,
let live, and get real

Face upturned, glad to be out
getting wet, mind distracted;
domestic crises, work targets
and assessments wreaking
havoc (with the best intentions)
stifling that very inspiration
meant to persuade, encourage,
leaves us feeling like flies
feeding on garbage left out
for the bin men, fodder for stray
cats, dogs, homeless folks, waiting
for Christmas

Oh, we may have a job, home,
mortgage etcetera - but a life
to call our own…?

Some may beg to differ, thinking
through yet another staff rota
at supper or marking homework
once guests (finally) gone home
to snug beds, 1001 nights and more
besides of cramming heads,
misting-up eyes, asking questions,
stirring up more lies and half lies
meant to persuade, encourage, only
to leave us feeling like flies
on garbage left for the bin men
to dispose

Christmas comes, Christmas goes;
it’s the inner self knows best
how to make the most of a potential
too precious to waste

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2018

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'Waiting for Christmas' in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time, Assembly Books, 2005; revised ed. in e-format in preparation.]

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Saturday 25 October 2014

Past-Present-Future, a Collective Responsibility

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

A reader asks why I often write past-present-future as one word rather than separating past, present and future.  The interconnection is so great that I see them as a whole; just as time is a continuum so all we say and do at any one time will like as not affect and reflect not only ourselves, but others too - one way or another, to a greater or lesser extent, but significantly all the same  (whether we or they choose to  acknowledge it or not) in any near or distant moment in time.

As for the world in which we human beings persistently express a penchant for destruction and division ... is it not high time we focused more on pulling together, accepting and respecting each other's differences instead of playing socio-cultural religious-political football with them?

Any tears in the ozone layer will not mend themselves unless we all become more pollution conscious and stop arguing among ourselves long enough to take an honest look as how we are inflicting all but irretrievable damage to the planet.

Those leading politicians, with fingers in various Big Business pies, may well choose to play down the long-term effects of polluting the planet, but need to cut the rhetoric and act NOW or risk plunging future generations into an Armageddon scenario…

PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE, A COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY 

In the rain, an acid rain, you’re there
sharing the burden of my despair

Let the world roll out its history
consigning us to memory,
clouds forbid the sun, heavens weep;
in my dark, your light I’ll keep,
till this mere flesh no more can stand
and Death lends us a hand
as through a graveyard in a gentle rain
we ghosts will walk and talk again

In the rain, an acid rain, you’re there,
sharing the burden of my despair

Though our world blast into infinity,
consigning us to the galaxy,
yet seedlings shall survive, endure
in Mother Nature's loving care
till songbirds, in time, return
to the killing fields of Everyman,
redeem a so-sorry history of acid rain
till humankind ghost us yet again

In the rain, an acid rain, we’re here
sharing the burden of all despair

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007; 2014
  
[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title ‘Easing the Burden’ in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007.]


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Friday 24 October 2014

Potential for Inspiration


A colleague once remarked, not a little facetiously, that poets think they have the answer to everything.

Oh, but I wish!

At school, some 50+ years ago, my English teacher, Mr Rankin, (a Scotsman) once commented to the effect that life is all about discovery, and that is all about asking questions. 'Stop asking questions,' he told us, 'and you might as well be dead.'

Oh, but YES.

So what is life all about? Why are we here?  Different people, different answers, but it’s asking the question that counts, and makes us who we are.

POTENTIAL FOR INSPIRATION

What is life, but to have lived at all?
What is death, but all we‘ve not missed?
What is love, but to have loved at all?
What is beauty, but its flowers in a mist?
What is desire but to know desire at all?
(What is loss but by its light never kissed?)
What are dreams, but a life unfulfilled?
What are regrets, but art’s timelines?
What are hopes, but the inner eye’s take
on seasonal colours?

What is life, but to have lived it all?
What is death, but refuting all we missed?
What is love, but to have loved it all,
the beauty of its flowers in a spring mist?
What is desire, but to have desired it all,
loss but shadows where its light has passed
in a dream, the stuff a common humanity
lets pass for peace where its regrets run
with its hopes along timelines recording
art’s penchant for copycat?

In being moved to ask just one question
lies the potential for inspiration


Copyright R. N. Taber 2012

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Wednesday 22 October 2014

As Time Goes By OR Love, a (Personal) History

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

Time passes; we change, grow older, yet a loved one’s image remains much the same, ageless and timeless in our eyes … 

If we take an hourglass as a metaphor for life, time passing should never be thought of as its  gradually emptying but as its constantly in need of topping up ... with all the emotional resources available to us, especially love.

This poem is a villanelle.

AS TIME GOES BY

Brown hair, shades of grey,
whatever path I pursue;
time, ever slipping away…

Fun childhood days at play,
youth’s wild ways too;
brown hair, shades of grey

“Let’s laugh, not cry!” I say
(some wishes come true)
time, ever slipping away…

For every weepy Blues day,
golden moments too;
brown hair, shades of grey

Late, love, it came my way,
gave my heart to you;
time, ever slipping away…

Forever, love vowed to stay,
life’s tangled strands undo;
brown hair, shades of grey,
time, ever slipping away…

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2014

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]

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Monday 20 October 2014

The Scream OR Potential for Self-destruct


I was born on the winter solstice, 1945 so, yes, that means I will be 65 years young in December. I suspect most if not all of us have our share of disappointments and frustrations in life, sadness and tragedy too, upon which demons pounce and often never (quite) disappear. [Demons from long-ago closet years as a teenager and young man when gay relationships were illegal here in the UK haunt me still, but less so as time goes by.]

Looking back at my life and looking inwards at my inner self, I can track the scream just so far …then either it stops or I stop looking, I am never sure which. I know I will hear it again, but in the meantime, there is life to be lived and its pleasures to be enjoyed. As for the scream, it may well haunt me, but as I discovered long ago, it can’t hurt me … unless I let it.

Do you, too, hear a scream? It is silent, yet sometimes I think it is the loudest sound we will ever hear, shaking the whole body now and then as if it were no more than a leaf in a storm.  I guess the trick is to ride out the storm and find comfort in anticipation of its passing and the sun coming out again …as it will, and does … as inevitably as human nature calling upon its greater strengths and making the best rather than the worst of ... whatever. 

'The Scream' by Edvard Munch (1893); image from Wikipedia. One of several versions of the painting "The Scream" (title: Der Schrei der Natur, 'The Scream of Nature') at The National Gallery, Oslo, Norway.


THE SCREAM or POTENTIAL FOR SELF-DESTRUCT

Five years-old and waiting for a scream
that I knew had to be there, but never came
so I put it down to imagination,
too young to articulate on the surrealism
of self-destruction

Fifteen years of looking for the scream
(an awakening sexuality trying to find a voice)
but I put it down to imagination,
not quite ready to do battle with the prejudices
of convention

Twenty-one years of imagining a scream
much like a poorly read poem in a bad dream,
kept putting it down to imagination
fired by stresses of home-school-work situation
and birth sign

Thirty-five years of living with a scream,
mind in freefall, body soaked in its own sperm
for venturing beyond imagination,
homing in on an impotent rage to get even,
(self-destruct button)

Fifty-five years of looking for the scream,
first heard in the womb, always hurting my ears,
for being put down to imagination
by a socio-cultural, one-upmanship dogma
some like to call religion

Sixty-five years, of harbouring a scream
arguing for a sense of spirituality with sexuality
and nature second to none
in a configuration of common humanity
left to the imagination

In millions of screams across the world,
the same message to mind-body-spirit as in art
that we stop, look and listen
to this human forest of deciduous trees
pleading preservation

No killing it, but ever running the scream
to earth in life-love-death if only to find an ally
in the human condition, sword
of freedom in the grip of a human spirit
demanding regeneration

[London, June 2010]

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010 (Rev. 2018)

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Sunday 19 October 2014

It's Never too Late for Love Poetry


[Update 3rd Oct 2018: A reader has asked about the videos on my You Tube channel. To fully enjoy, you need to keep the sound on to hear the poem/s I read over the video/s. Oh, and if you would like to comment on any of the blogs, feel free to post in the Comments box. I never publish comments (too many ignorant trolls) but always read them; include your email address if you would like a reply.]

Now, sometimes we so wish we could put the clock back and let life and love return to the way they once were. Oh, but especially love!

It is never easy to let go of love. Even when the mind-body-spirit is close to admitting defeat, two hearts bonding as one may well have other ideas …

It's never too late even for the poetry of love which, as many of us have discovered, can often be revived once regret and a sense of loss pause long enough kick-start the heartfelt renewal of a forward looking mind-body-spirit; even death cannot kill the poetry of love, as any of us who have lost loved ones well know.

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE FOR LOVE POETRY

As I lay on a pillow thinking about us,
you opened the door and came in,
crossed to the bed, lay down beside me,
cradled my head, swore you loved me,
despite having chosen to see me in agony
(knowing you’d cheated on me again)
begging to share a bed left sad and lonely
as my tears for our love left to die

I resisted your embrace, closed my eyes
to care lines telling far too many sorry tales
on you-me-us

You let fly with a passion to stay a part
of a gloriously light-dark history
that had seen us feeding off our need
for one another, making believe we were
in love and nothing else mattered
but flames of mad desire, devouring us,
little left once over and done, but ghosts
having braved a fire no phoenix dare...

Unless (a familiar murmuring in the ears)
we quit this soap opera of ours and give love 
a fighting chance...

A tempting offer, love almost persuaded
by our tears, but suddenly sees through
its disguise, tells us straight, "Enough lies";
Ah but restless libidos had other ideas
and chose for us (as we knew they would)
the bitter-sweet prose of fallen heroes,
nor was it some God punishing us for hadn’t we  
already seen to that ourselves?

May the 'live' mind-body-spirit we share
stay with us as even we journey through eternity;
forever, love poetry

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007; 2019

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'Too Late for Poetry' in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007; like many of my poems, I revised it in line with Time's insisting life teach me new lessons.] 





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