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.

Saturday 20 June 2015

Flights of Tension to Fanciful Places


This may not be one of my better poems, but it has a certain therapeutic value, for me at any rate. Many years ago, someone told me that the best cure for tension and stress is imagination. I had never thought of imagination as a form of creative therapy, but of course it is, and one of the best.

Oh, but haven’t we all been there at some time or another, past caring and simply wanting to shut the world out, slump in a comfortable armchair and forget about everything and everyone for a while …?

The trouble with slumping is that it has a nasty habit of temporarily removing life’s more attractive distractions from the inner eye and insisting it takes us down the darker side of Memory Lane, thereby making us feel even worse … which is where imagination comes in, and will  play its part
part to perfection ... if we but let it. We have but to close our eyes, think nice thoughts and let mind-body-spirit whisk us off to wherever it is we would rather be, and with whom ...

At the time I wrote this poem, I was in the early stages of recovering from and reflecting on a very bad cold when a good ‘slump’ is just about all I’d felt like doing. My cold all but forgotten, I was soon putting pen to paper ...

For many years, writing a poem has been my way of not letting a ‘slump’ get the better of me. The same can be said, if to a lesser degree, when writing fiction; while my novels have not been bestsellers, they have given me much pleasure, and feedback from my fiction blog/has been very encouraging. (Feel free to browse any time - for both my general and gay-interest fiction - at:  

https://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.com/2016/05/news-updates-fiction.html

FLIGHTS OF TENSION TO FANCIFUL PLACES

Slump in a chair, thinking about life
and all the people I’ve known,
wondering where have they gone?

Slump in a chair, thinking about life
and all the things I have done,
wondering where I went wrong?

Slump in a chair, thinking about life
and choices made from the heart,
wondering where fear played a part?

Slump in a chair, thinking about life
and lovers who promised to stay
but left within hours of a night or day

Slump in a chair, thinking about life
and all the years wasted on regret
where I should have stood up to fate

Slump in a chair, thinking about life
and every epiphany I’ve known,
wondering where did I go so wrong?

Slump in a chair, thinking about life
and growing older, weaker,
for knowing I could have done better

Slump in a chair, thinking about death,
and all the people I’ve known,
wondering if there’s a hell or heaven?
  
Slump in a chair, watching television,
soaking up soap opera friends ,
lost the plot, left wondering how it ends

Slump in a chair, fret about being alone?
Not this time (slam on the brakes);
will get my life back, whatever it takes

Copyright R N. Taber 2008

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Wednesday 10 June 2015

Dressing Table Wars

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

I suspect that aspects of the human self are as often at war with each other as suing for peace it is a confusing, even distressing scenario of which mind, body and spirit not unsurprisingly or infrequently grow weary, sometimes all at once, and we sink into depression.

Sadly, there is still a stigma attached to any form of mental illness, not least because few people understand it unless they have been depressed through it themselves or close to someone who has. It was much the same when I experienced a severe nervous breakdown some 30+ years ago. Few people understood what I was going through, and it was only after a long, lonely battle over several years that I began to feel well again. I even managed to find and hold down a job although it would be a few more years yet before the sense of fighting a losing battle would leave me once and for all. Well, not quite once and for all, but I can honestly say that my quality of life and resistance to despair improved beyond measure as the years passed. I still take a m low dose (25mg) of antidepressant nightly and – as regular readers well know – writing has been more a creative therapy for me than an art form even as a child. (I will be 70 this year.)

Being depressed is nothing like being fed-up; it is a soul-destroying nightmare from which the depressed person can take a very long time to awaken, if ever.  An invisible illness, it is easily misunderstood. Sadly, one of the last people to recognize depression is the depressed person him/herself. Uncharacteristic mood swings, aggression, rudeness, bouts of crying for no obvious reason, over-reacting and getting things out of proportion…all these can be signs of depression, likely to culminate over a period of time in a firm of mental breakdown unless professional help and support is made available.

While the best help and support can be provided by family and friends, not everyone has family on hand while some friends feel so let down by a depressed person’s attitude towards them that they drift away; they SEE the same person, but have no idea of the emotional turmoil that person is going through and which, if left unchecked, may well permanently damage his or her whole personality.

To be fair, none of us are mind readers. Even so, the more sensitive and discerning family member or close friend will suspect something is wrong. Suggesting to someone they may be depressed will almost certainly meet with a hot denial in the first instance. Please don’t give up, but stick with it, no matter how tough it gets; and it will get tough, almost as much for the person who is trying to help as for the person who is mentally ill.

There are degrees of mental illness, of course. Whatever, there is no shame in it, especially in the kind of stressful, even dangerous world we live in with stress often coming at us from all sides to such an extent and at such a rate that even the strongest body, mind and spirit feels under siege.

Depression is not a battle that can be easily won, and certainly not alone. If you are depressed, don’t wait, as I did, for depression to get the better of you. Strike first. Ask for help or at least try and express something of how you feel to someone you sense will understand and help you to help yourself. Easily said than done, as I know only too well… 

DRESSING TABLE WARS 

Wall, shining like a mirror,
shadows dripping drops of light
like sweat on a battlefield

Words, pitting foe against foe;
a roaring in the head like sounds
of battle in a silent movie

Wall, a white board left blank
to any suggestions from the floor
on the subject of peace talks

Words, advancing like armies
on an invisible enemy, worn down
by stomach pains and tears

Wall, questioning the nature
of the beast, philosophy left to run
a lonely gamut of home truths

Words, starting to make sense
of sensibilities modernity so loves
to camouflage in Rat Race gear

Wall, a collage of human selves
reflecting vulnerability to life forces
and potential for common sense

Words, moving lips in a mirror,
rehearsing a plea for help in repairing
any cracks in mind-body-spirit 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2015

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