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.

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Shades of Comic Genius

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

[Update Nov 2, 2018: A reader wrote in to say I 'clearly have no idea about the physical issues that come with growing old.' Well, I will be 73 soon, have been living with prostate cancer for nearly eight years and have arthritis in both my neck and a leg injured in a bad fall in 2014 when I fractured my ankle and spent months learning to walk again. Yes, old age can be a nightmare, but - whatever our age and whatever we are up against - it's all about the human spirit...isn't it?] RNT

Growing old can bring all manner of health and other problems. Yet, most of us feel little different
within ourselves than we did as we passed through various stages of youth and middle age although (hopefully) more than a shade wiser.

Every now and then, it feels GOOD to defy the outward signs of age and let the inner self let its hair down…

Never let anyone tell you that old age is nothing but a killing field.

SHADES OF COMIC GENIUS
(For old[er] people everywhere)

We stripped naked under a leafy sky,
saw our bodies turn to gold,
for a while forgot about growing old

Rediscovering youth’s feisty passion,
we surfed its glorious tide,
put aches, pains and home truths aside

A balmy breeze gave us its blessing
and songbirds sang an amen
while halcyon days revisited us again

Though years pass and take their toll,
the spirit of adventure remains
to seize the day, throw off its chains

If love is the greatest adventure of all,
sex is but half the story,
a shared empathy, its power and glory

We dressed quickly, nature applauding
bodies frayed at the seams
acknowledging its comedy of dreams

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


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Thursday 25 October 2012

A Strictly Private Viewing

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

Today’s poem has not appeared on the blog since 2009. It first appeared in a Forward Press anthology, Poetry Rivals, 2009: Lyrical Winds and subsequently in my collection.

Now, dreams are often seen as an intrusion into our personal space, but personal space comprises conscious and unconscious thought. I see dreams as affording us a strictly private viewing of it, taking in all those parts that comprise the whole; reality, illusion, ego, home truths, denial, wishful thinking...etc. etc.

How we interpret dreams and may or may not let them influence us for better or worse...well, that's called choice.

A STRICTLY PRIVATE VIEWING

Cartoon faces moving across my sky
like a home movie;
I close tired eyes to push them away
but they haunt my mind;
happy faces, sad faces, tearful faces,
lips mouthing my name;
familiar, faintly familiar, some skeletal
expressions breaking out

Past, present, wishful thinking signals
to the brain to shut down
but they have logged on, not ready yet
to turn me off;
lies, half lies, bad errors of judgement
like some grotesque mob
up for rough justice for want of answers
I don’t have, never did;
monstrous accusations and insinuations
fall like bird droppings
on a statue’s public profile, frozen in time,
trapped in its own failings

I hear a distant cry, an echo of centuries
in pain, anger and grief
for all private lives and a personal space
relegated to speculation
new faces, clear signals, warning off
Conspirators to Nightmare,
put expressions of defeat to rout, deleted
like redundant icons on a screen;
benign spirits enough to grace a totem pole
take control, cast out
demons let slip past a kinder humanity
by an unforgiving hierarchy

Eyes open, eyes shut, sky relaying
to pillow the faces of love;
we sleep, we awaken to direct and star
in our own reality peep-show
for as long as it takes to log off from it all,
wondering if we might yet get
to carry on in a loved one's dream-poems
in remembrance of times past

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

'[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'A Penny to See the Peep-Show' in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]


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Wednesday 24 October 2012

Suburban Hero OR The Good Neighbour

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

Today's poem has not appeared on this blog before. I have nothing to add, but will let it speak for itself.

However, I would say to the reader who kindly says he enjoys many of my poems but thinks my collections would sell better and that I'd probably acquire a higher media profile within the arts media if I 'scrapped the gay poetry altogether...' Well, yes, you may well have a point. [Do I care?]

The reason I insist on publishing both general and gay-interest poems is because there is far more to anyone than how their gender or sexuality meets the eye, especially the judgemental eye. Yours truly,  for one, gets fed up with the level of such short sightedness in societies worldwide.

It is not only gay people who are victims of HIV-AIDS, of course; another reason for posting this poem on both poetry blogs. 

SUBURBAN HERO or THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR

He was just an ordinary man, living
an ordinary life on an ordinary street,
and whenever we chanced to meet
he would always make time for a chat,
ask me (for example) did I know that
Mrs T at number ten had been ill again
with lumbago, old J at number five
caught a bug in hospital and was damn
lucky to be alive?

He was such an ordinary man, living
such an ordinary life on such a street
as you might expect to find anywhere
if you care to look beyond dull fronts
of ordinary houses, could be forgiven
for thinking no worse fate (surely?)
than this spending one’s days in such
predictable ways, the stuff of suburban
myth for centuries

He was such an ordinary man, died
only a few years ago in a road accident;
no complicated will, only a pre-paid
funeral insurance, a few items to friends
and the house to an HIV-AIDS charity
that found everyone confiding how they
had suspected he was ‘one of those’
but …immaterial, and the whole street
turned out for the funeral

Such an ordinary man, nothing special,
simply a nice, neighbourly homosexual

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Bks., 2012]


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Tuesday 23 October 2012

An Affinity with the Life Force of Dead Leaves

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

A new poem today for autumn, and falling leaves everywhere (not confined to autumn) in a very blustery wind.

We all feel low sometimes. Only yesterday, I found myself relating to a dead leaf in the street, heading for a drain; a depressing experience until I reminded myself that it was not the end of the last leaf in the whole world; others would follow in an endless cycle of life and death where dying is not so much the beginning of the end but a way of leaving space for new beginnings.

An old man who lived on the street where I was born and lived until I was 14 years-old told me once that I should never fear death but think of it as a life-force. He was not a religious person so I thought his 80-something years must have taken their toll or perhaps it was just wishful thinking. (He died only weeks later.) It has taken me more than half a century to understand what he meant.




AN AFFINITY WITH THE LIFE FORCE OF DEAD LEAVES

I drifted lonely as a leaf
left to fare as it may in a wintry breeze,
perhaps (who knows?) missing
its parent tree and multiple siblings,
playing host to feathered friends
as long as their seasons last, world
a happier place for a kinder nature’s
wistful take on it

Who can ever say (for sure)
a leaf cannot think, feel, experience
the ebb and flow of life
in ways only Earth Mother knows
who gives, takes away,
and gives back again when the time
comes to renew her vows to humanity
at each spring blessing?

I watched a leaf sucked
into a drain, lost forever among sewage
beyond salvaging (who knows?)
as I feel myself sucked into a vortex
scaremongers call Old Age
where the hope is, we’ll be saved,  
lovingly pressed collectables between
pages of living memory

Did it feel rejected, my leaf,
for being left to rot in a dark sewer
where all the world’s garbage
flows into its seas, as likely to kill off 
countless life forms as the shrewd
property developer felling trees
or an old poet infecting imagination
with its worst fears?

Back home, a glossy magazine,
repudiating my distress as bold as brass
with the latest fashion pics,
celeb gossip, ideas to impress the boss,
tips on keeping old age at bay;
in the garden, leaves faring better, 
with the potential to give news editors
a good run for their money


Copyright R. N. Taber 2012

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Friday 19 October 2012

A Poet's Shrewsbury

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

A poetry reading in 2007 took me to Shrewsbury where I engaged with a lovely audience in a local bookshop. I did not get around to including my poem in a collection until this year and have to say I feel more than a shade self-conscious about posting a poem of mine alongside mention of such a fine poet as Wilfred Owen.

Wilfred Owen (1883-1918)

Owen, a homosexual (the word ‘gay’ was not used in this context in those days) is probably one of the best known of the World War 1 poets. His name appears on the Great War Memorial tablet inside Shrewsbury Abbey.

Photo: Shrewsbury Abbey

‘Symmetry’ in the grounds of the abbey is sculpture, by Paul de Monchaux commissioned by the Wilfred Owen Association (Owen went to school in Shrewsbury) to commemorate the poet’s life and work; it was unveiled in June 1993. The line "I am the enemy you killed" engraved on one side is from Owen’s poem, ‘Strange Meeting’ The design is meant to convey the symmetries in Owen’s poem as well as the trenches of 1917 and the Sambre-Oise canal in 1918.

Photo: ‘Symmetry’

On 4th November 1918, the British 32nd Division crossed the Sambre-Oise canal at Ors, in the face of strong opposition. Wilfred Owen was killed on the towpath on this side of the canal about one kilometre to the north of the bridge.


Photo: Western Front Association plaque for Wilfred Owen by the Sambre Canal, Ors, France. 

Regarding my poem, I should mention that Laura's Tower is a folly built on the summit of Shrewsbury Castle motte around 1790 by Thomas Telford for Laura, the daughter of Sir William Pulteney, as a summerhouse. It is of an octagonal design in red sandstone with conical copper roof. The river Severn flows by

Photo: Laura’s Tower


Mount House, birthplace of Charles Darwin


A POET'S SHREWSBURY

Follow the market trader’s cry
across old Shrewsbury town
where the fickle Severn flows by

Discern in history’s cloudy eye
scenes of Parliament v Crown;
follow the market trader’s cry

At Laura’s tower, dare lift high
the hem of Nature’s gown
where the fickle Severn flows by

Swans over the English Bridge fly
with dive-bombing precision,
follow the market trader’s cry

See sunset’s flames lick at the sky
as if the grand abbey burning down
where the fickle Severn flows by

Ponder a war poet casting the die,
Darwin giving heaven cause to frown;
follow the market trader’s cry
where the fickle Severn flows by

[Shrewsbury, August 2007]

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]



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Tuesday 16 October 2012

A Passion for Trees

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

Today's poem has not appeared on the blog since 2008 and has been  especially requested by ‘Jack and Louise’ for ‘[our] son Michael and his partner Jonathan.’

So the  poem talks of gay love…so what? Love is love is love just as a poem is a poem is a poem and - most importantly of all - a person is a person is a person. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.

Oh, but the tales a tree can tell...if we but care to listen!

The famous opening lines of ‘Trees’ by American writer, Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) s may well spring to mind:

‘I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree...’

Photo: An ash tree.

A PASSION FOR TREES

There’s a tree in a field
that sings me a love song
every time I’m sitting
where it rises from the ground;
listen, and you’ll hear
the lyric of a love song hanging
on a dream lost and found

By a tree in a field
we wrote our first love song,
bodies entwining
as we lay there on the ground,
sharing with the birds
such joy, such passion, hanging
on a dream lost and found

There’s a tree in a field
that watched us kiss and part,
not daring to believe
as we lay there on the ground
how gay love might
survive a world left but hanging
on dreams lost and found

To a tree in a field
we returned to write a love song,
bodies entwining
as we lay there on the ground,
sharing with the birds
such joy, such passion, a waking
dream lost and found

Copyright R. N. Taber 2008

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]





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Sunday 14 October 2012

Dunster, Marking Time

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

I have written many ‘place’ poems; places I have visited and with which I have fallen in love. Always hopeless at taking photographs, I try to absorb my surroundings and later compose a poem to reflect them.

Now, I love Somerset so was delighted when reader ‘Kathy’ in New Zealand got in touch recently to say how thrilled she was to come across my poem Dunster, Marking Time on the blog as she was born there. It appears her family migrated to New Zealand in the 1970s. Since I have not posted the poem since 2008 it is good to know that some readers enjoy browsing the archives.

The poem first appeared on the BBC Somerset site which is worth exploring and will also take you to my poem on another picturesque village, Watchet, closely associated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:


For good measure, I am also posting Classic Somerset inspired by R. D. Blackmore’s classic novel Lorna Doone; the poem appears in my latest collection Tracking the Torchbearer.

As well as being a very beautiful part of the UK, Somerset is also steeped in history and some of you may care to look it up on Wikipedia:


DUNSTER, MARKING TIME

Come clouds of steam or sea mist,
its castle ghosts watch over
Dunster village, shore and forest

Yarn market shell among the best,
(hear buyers and sellers barter)
come clouds of steam or sea mist

Where Benedictines have blessed
history’s customary makeover;
Dunster, village, shore and forest

At a water mill its days have kissed,
engage with past and future,
come clouds of steam or sea mist

Where packhorses once crossed
and nuns offered up a prayer;
Dunster village, shore and forest

Where Doomesday stories persist,
along the Avill river…
come clouds of steam or sea mist,
Dunster village, shore and forest

[Dunster, Somerset, May 2008]

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

 Photo: 17th century Yarn Market, Dunster

 CLASSIC SOMERSET

Doone valley, classic fiction
for holiday images
conjuring true inspiration

Come any with a predilection
for turning nature’s pages;
Doone valley, classic fiction

At Badgworthy Water, listen
out for Carver’s rages
conjuring true inspiration

At Earth Mother’s invitation,
share a Love of Ages;
Doone valley, classic fiction

Celebration of Lorna and John
(birds singing their praises)
conjuring true inspiration

Cream teas teasing imagination
to revisit R. D’s pages;
Doone valley, classic fiction
conjuring true inspiration

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]

  Photo: This bridge marks the boundary between Somerset and Devon in Doone Valley.

 [Please Note: My poetry collections are only on sale in the UK but anyone can order (signed) copies from me at a generous blogger discount. For details, contact rogertab@aol.com with ‘Blog reader’ or Poetry collection’ in the subject field.]


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Friday 12 October 2012

Poor Sparrow

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

While this overcrowded island of ours badly needs more (affordable) housing, we must protect what remains of our green and pleasant land. So many birds are losing their natural habitats. This is not only bad news for the, but bad news for us too.


Let’s all speak up to save our trees and woodlands, and make sure there are always green fields nearby for everyone to enjoy, especially our children, and wildlife too… 

POOR SPARROW

Once a village, quickly became a town;
green fields now a housing estate
where we lowered poor sparrow down

In lanes we’d watch the harvest sown,
now highways, commuters running late;
once a village, quickly became a town

Of daisies a tree nymph’s spring gown
within creak, squeak, of a trellis gate
where we lowered poor sparrow down

More peace and quiet than ever known,
though small politics its fishwives berate;
once a village, quickly became a town

Office blocks where kites once flown,
nature’s finest gone for cheapskate
where we lowered poor sparrow down

Long years past, we children grown,
memories like sunlight on wet roof slate;
once a village, quickly became a town
where we lowered poor sparrow down

[From: Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]



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Wednesday 10 October 2012

Best (Free) Seats at the Opera

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

Reader ‘Sahira’ has kindly been in touch to say how much she especially enjoys my nature poems. Many thanks for that, encouragement always gratefully received. Sahira has also asked for more information about the Cheddar Gorge after viewing the videos posted on my You Tube Channel + poems: http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

(Click on ‘browse videos’ and scroll to Cheddar Gorge clips 1, 2, and 3.)

More about the Cheddar Gorge on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_Gorge

Meanwhile…

Today's poem has been significantly revised since its last appearance on the blog in March 2011 while (hopefully) giving the reader food for thought regarding our relationship with nature, for better or worse. We have not been kind to nature nor is nature always kind to us, yet together we make a good team. Could it be that we are not so different after all, but two sides of the same life-force?

BEST (FREE) SEATS AT THE OPERA 

Music in the air, timeless songs
we only ever hear
for listening out for birds, bees,
and summer showers
wherever tree-ushers gesture
mind-body-spirit takes its place
in the front row

Though humankind try to copy,
modify or destroy,
it can but fail to silence songs
Earth Mother teaches
her children from seedlings
(if never on time at rehearsals)
for the Opera of Life

Lights down, only Pan’s pipes
keeping us reflective
until the next act begins. puts us
through our paces,
gives imagination its head,
as per  humanity’s predilection
for performance art

Though we be deaf, blind, dumb,
the Spirit of Nature 
can be felt and passed on by all,
come the sun by day 
or the moon by night, if only
for treading footprints of live clay
left by dead poets

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2018


[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]



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Thursday 4 October 2012

Poems By Passing Clouds & The Challenge (2 poems)

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

I posted a ‘Cloudscape’ video on You Tube yesterday and read one of my ‘cloud’ poems (The Challenge) over it: http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

As I only posted The Challenge here in February, I am repeating another ‘cloud’ poem that has not appeared on the blog since 2010.

Today is National Poetry Day here in the UK. Here’s hoping that if you love clouds even half as much as I do, you will enjoy these poems…

POEMS BY PASSING CLOUDS

Some songs in the wind
only the trees ever hear
and even beasts and birds
never learn the words,
can but live by the descant
of hungry young in spring,
butterfly wings in summer,
falling leaves in autumn winds
bin bag puppies in winter

Some songs in the wind
only the trees ever hear,
no matter that humankind
imposes its own lyrics
(poor carbon copies passing
for popular reflections in
some subway busker’s eye)
sure to become global classics
since they make people cry

Some songs in the wind
only the trees ever hear,
will never let on they know
or beast and bird give up
on a world that humankind
likes to make out it knows
but dare not face the wind
with its, oh, so pathetic untruths,
lyrics sure to blow the mind

There’s a song in the wind
only the trees ever hear
about nature’s secret ways;
life, death, misadventure,
why it’s the good die young
more often than not, while
the old pressure the rest of us
not to forget long-ago, kinder days
but take a leaf from the trees

There’s a song in every tree
running rings around history

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010. 2012

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010; slightly rev. 7/19]


 THE CHALLENGE

There is a bridge between clouds
where we pause
who ponder on the purpose
on living just to die,
where the spirit unfulfilled,
the heart strayed
across certain boundaries society
has imposed (conventions)
so much the better to disguise
its worst intentions

There is a bridge between clouds
where we pause
who ask why the world below
has let us down…or did we
let ourselves and each other down
in the end
for never ceasing to demand more
than our fair share
of whatever peace and love
to be found there?

There is a bridge between clouds
where we’ll wait
our turn to cross…or be left
wishing deeds undone,
words unsaid, lies left creeping
under the tongue,
never to see the cold light of a day
when we must answer
to all its invidious shadows
may have heard us say

We can but cross, we children of Earth,
rise to the challenge of life over death

Copyright R. N. Taber 1984; 2010



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Tuesday 2 October 2012

A Little Light Rain

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

Today's poem has not appeared on the blog since 2008, a good enough reason I thought to give it an airing for those readers who may have missed it.

Now, it is often said, love is blind. True, love can be blind. Worse still, though, is the participant in a relationship who inflicts that blindness on his or her partner for their own selfish ends.

It can happen to a couple on the home front or political allies on the front line. 

That's life...a force for love that can make or break the human spirit. Thankfully, the latter is blessed with incredible powers of self-healing if not always quick to come into play.... 

A LITTLE LIGHT RAIN

The night I died, you cried over me
tears that lied, for it was never
meant to be that we’d have forever
though spring, summer, autumn,
winter years promising an eternity
of love to be tucked up in some
time capsule buried in Epping Forest
for total strangers to chance upon
in darker centuries come and gone
than knew that love once lived here,
a progressive world’s brief to let it die,
pick its flowers, rework its songs

It’s the power of love mends fences,
heals wounds but better, you said,
to let the dogs of war have their day,
grab a lion’s share of spoils not ours,
make good the tools mercenaries leave
for other predators to fight over where
they have spilt red wine on the best
tablecloths left like out of date maps
in a White House kitchen, reflections
on a love and peace stacked up among
other dirty laundry and washing-up

Who are we to let slip an opportunity
to sit at table with kings and queens,
presidents, prime ministers, whatever
religious leaders flavour of the day,
at parties to which we’re not invited
but by default, permitted to have our say
if only to seal a bargain, prove a point,
make outlaws of good people or heroes
of a portraiture long dead and gone,
unable to tell how it was, likely to go on
playing the chameleon?

Ah, I know you by your crocodile tears;
your face appears in glossy magazines
and billboards in every High Street
telling us what we should do or not do,
say or not say, eat or not eat, in case
we start to think for ourselves, even see
our spreadsheets inclined to agree
with an underlying trend of inhumanity;
Heaven forbid, anyone come to know
that wherever the lies your tears tell fall
only weeds will ever grow

It takes but a little acid rain in the eye
to blind us to hypocrisy

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]



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Monday 1 October 2012

A Feeling For Love-Hate Relationships

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

Some readers may be interested to know that a new serial begins on my fiction blog today. Sacrilege was first published in the UK in 2008 and is Book Two in a planned trilogy Blasphemy-Sacrilege-Redemption. [Book Three has been delayed through illness but I hope to finish writing it in time to serialise it on the blog next year before publishing the entire trilogy as e-editions on Google Play.]

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.com

Meanwhile…

Can we really love and hate at the same time? I think so, yes. Some people (and places) make us SO mad sometimes, yet we love them to bits.

I hate London much of the time, especially these days as it is so overcrowded, yet I miss it as a lover misses his or her partner whenever I am away for long.  Certainly, too, I have discovered it is possible to hate certain people almost as much as loving them. They are weighty words, love and hate. I suspect we use them too freely in the course of everyday conversation, indeed as we journey through life.

There are even more abstract forms of love hate-relationships, too, which nonetheless have a bearing on our lives; we may well prefer to avoid them, but such is our need for them that we have little or no choice but to engage with them now and then. Mind you, any thanks for their timely intervention is likely to be more than a shade mixed with resentment for our feeling  unable to resists engaging with them at all; much the same principle applies to many if not most love-hate relationships turn…

This poem is a kenning.

A FEELING FOR LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIPS

Oh, but I will always try
to be there for you whenever
I am needed,
keep my distance when it feels
more appropriate,
listen whenever you need an ear,
and support you
where the heart makes a pitch
for centre-stage

Oh, but I will always try
to look into your head should
you turn against me
in the intense heat of emotions
setting themselves
against us (for whatever reason)
descending to a wintry chill
and left unacknowledged between
cracks in thin ice

Oh, but I will always try
to bring you gently down to earth
when fine ideals fly
in the face of temporal priorities
primed to shoot down
any aspirations of a human spirit
likely to blow a hole
in the arms budget, and give peace
a fighting chance

Agreed cover for home truths and lies,
I pass for the Spirit of Compromise

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012





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