The Message OR Aspiring to Peace on Earth

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

[Update. June 5th 2017]; In the light of the latest terror attacks in the UK, the Prime Minister has said that we should be less tolerant of Islamic extremism. I would add that we also need to stop walking on eggshells in the name of so-called political correctness for fear of causing offence to an ever growing Muslim population. Political correctness is - quite rightly - meant to prevent abuse of people for their socio-cultural-religious ethos, NOT ti excuse intolerable behaviour in anyone.]

[Update, June 19 2017: In the wake of the attack on Muslims leaving a mosque in the Finsbury Park area of London in the early hours of this morning, it is more important than ever to cherish the freedoms we value, especially everyone's Human Right to follow the religion of their choice...or no religion at all, as I do. Terrorist and Far Right acts and propaganda would divide and destroy communities worldwide; the majority of peace loving humankind must show we are bigger and better than that.] RT

Today's poem also appears on my gay-interest blog since it is, of course, not only gay people but all decent human beings who are threatened by a depraved view of Islam as practised by terrorists in its name.  

As regular readers know, I subscribe to no religion. Nor would I call myself an atheist as I like to think I have a strong sense of spirituality ... that I take from nature, nowhere else. However, I have open-minded, open-hearted friends of all faiths, including a Muslim friend. It is my experience that the majority of ordinary men and women, whatever their belief or non-belief, are ready and willing to take others as they find them and don't let religion - or any other differences - get in the way of being kind or even establishing lasting friendships … however much some of their leaders, deliberately or otherwise, might encourage them to do so.

Tragically, it is the fundamentalists (in any religion) who shout the loudest and not only make themselves heard but are exploited by a world media who would have us believe they are 'typical' Muslims, Christians, Hindus ... whatever.

Sadly, it has been my personal that the majority of religious people (of any religion) are intrinsically homophobic. However, I am glad to say I have also encountered a good many exceptions; hopefully, these will eventually prevail over the bigoted majority.

Whatever, these are as worrying times for gay people as anyone else. For example, a local newspaper in Tower Hamlets, a borough in the London’s East End that has a significant Muslim population, recently reported what reads as a very disturbing case. A teenager, apparently described by teachers at his school as “devout, humble Muslim” was recently acquitted on the charge of murdering a school student support office last November amid allegations that the victim was a “predatory paedophile”. The 17-year-old defendant admitted wielding the kitchen knife that fatally injured the man but said he had feared being raped or killed by him; he also admitted taking a knife with him in case the man tried to force him “into sexual acts”. Subsequently, he was unanimously cleared of both murder and manslaughter by the jury:

http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/united_kingdom/8353101.A_Level_pupil_is_cleared_of_murdering_student_officer/

My problem with this case is that, as the article reads, whether or not the victim was an alleged paedophile or gay man, if the student thought he might be sexually assaulted, why visit the man anyway and take a knife with him  ... ? Does this not give the green light to the view that 'It's okay to kill a gay' as I heard two schoolboys discussing on a bus only the other day? Worse, could it not also be interpreted as fueling the misconception, commonly expressed by the less enlightened among the heterosexual majority, that gay is synonymous with paedophile?

Whether shaped by the Far Right or fundamentalist extremism, a deplorable narrow-mindedness would appear to be on the rise in the US and Europe, along with others factions easily influenced by some of their worst sentiments. Yes, they may well win battles in the years ahead…BUT...they cannot and will not win the war against those who uphold the principles of a common humanity. Humanity is bigger and better than anything they may choose to throw at us.

This poem is repeated on both blogs.

THE MESSAGE or ASPIRING TO PEACE ON EARTH

The message of Islam is peace
though some people have other ideas;
beware, who dares undermine this

It’s of love the Koran teaches
though some people play on its tears;
the message of Islam is peace

To the world, its prophet reaches
though some people play on its fears;
beware, who dares undermine this

The truth about Islam is kindness
a prophet’s wisdom across centuries;
the message of Islam is peace

May religion, its martyrs embrace,
reject paltry egos poisoning its prayers;
beware, who dares undermine this

We are a common humanity, no less
for its religions and secular philosophies;
The message of Islam is peace;
beware, who dares undermine this

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

Crocodiles In The Water

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

I wrote this poem some years ago after a conversation with a young student whose family in his home country have to walk miles every day to fetch clean water. He was genuinely shocked that we, here in the West, take the simple, everyday act of turning on a tap so much or granted.

After the poem appeared in various print and online publications, readers wrote in whose various countries of origin were mostly in Africa (but also, latterly, Iraq) to say much the same thing.

We are living in the 21st century, for goodness sake! The West should be ashamed that we do not do more to provide basic amenities for poorer people world-wide.

We must do more: http://www.megree.com/e/3

Thhis poem is a villanelle.

CROCODILES IN THE WATER

A common slaughter,
Third World dying
for want of clean water

Children’s laughter
turns to crying,
a common slaughter

Each young-old grafter
grown sick of trying
for want of clean water

At some capital altar,
disciples denying
a common slaughter

A 21st century arena
found sadly lacking…
for want of clean water

Through gold teeth, eager
summit tipplers belying
a common slaughter
for want of clean water

[From: The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004]

No Storybook Hero + In Praise of Sea Thrift (2 Poems)

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

[Update Dec 1, 2017]: A reader (from Cornwall) has emailed to ask what inspired my fantasy novels, Mamelon 1 and  2 . Well, the plain and simple answer is that there in me - as quite probably in most if not all of us? - a Peter Pan character likely to spend the best part of a lifetime trying to get out and hoping (usually in vain) that no one will notice. Anyone interested will find my Mamelon novels on my fiction blog where a brief synopsis precedes each:

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/mamelon-glossary-of-names-and-terms.html

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/mamelon-fantasy-novel-synopsis.html

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/mamelon-2-chapter-one.html

Meanwhile...

As requested by ‘Jane’ (also in Cornwall) I am repeating a poem (the second below) and some comments I posted on my gay-interest blog back in June which prompted protests from several readers in Cornwall. No offence was intended. I simply wrote how it is, for me personally at any rate. Much as I love visiting what has to be one of the most beautiful parts of the UK, I have never found it very gay-friendly.

As I mentioned in a previous post, when Cornwall held its first ever Gay Pride march in Truro, August 2009, I emailed the organisers to wish them well, only to receive a nasty reply telling me to stay away as they wanted no truck with gay activists. I hadn’t intended to participate or so much as implied that I might…and replied that I am no activist, just a poet.

I had friends in Cornwall once but - surprise, surprise - they have moved away.  I wouldn't mind betting that no one among the gay community there is anywhere near as as intolerant and insensitive as it would appear are the heterosexual majority. Fat chance of a gay poet making much of an impression there! Only recently, a reader emailed to say they had offered a Cornwall library one of my poetry titles after receiving one as a present but had already bought one. The library declined to accept and it appears that a member of staff made a point of referring to the fact that my collections include gay material. As a librarian working in public libraries for many years, I was quite upset. I guess this just goes to show how the UK has a long way to go before it is united against homophobia. While I won’t be put off visiting beautiful Cornwall, I won’t be popping into any of its libraries either…or engaging with the locals in any gay-interest debate.

No gay activist, me, honestly. I’m just an Ordinary Joe who also happens to be a poet who, in turn, also happens to be gay.

NO STORYBOOK HERO

When I listen to the waves,
they always tell the same stories
told by leafy choirs
long, long ago…how one day
I’d be riding a white horse
to fame and glory….
Only, life never took me that way,
but in other directions
despite objections from alter ego,
friends and family;
I wasn’t meant be a hero of the kind
that rides out storms, surfs
giant waves, climbs snowy peaks,
charges to the rescue,
bugles blaring, just in time to save
the goodies from the baddies
the way they manage it in movies
and all-time best-sellers

Life, it found another role for me,
an Ordinary Joe in the street,
trying to make the best of things,
struggling to make ends meet
nothing to lose, everything to prove
because I’m gay 

I was never cut out for the kind 
of grand heroics
found in lively tales of derring-do,
though knock me down
and l will bounce right back
like a smiley clown,
(better applause than tears)
get on with my life as best I can,
take it on the chin
like a ‘real’ man, play my part,
from the heart, for who I am,
no hero leapt out of fantasy fiction
but an Ordinary Joe fighting
old prejudices, siding with the trees
against a world feeding myths,
lies and stereotypes
to its children who, in turn, hopefully
know better than to listen

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007, 2010

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, 2007] 

Sea Thrift

This poem is a villanelle:

IN PRAISE OF SEA THRIFT

Guardians of our history,

looking out for us

among rocks by the sea

Shadows once the enemy,

now protectors,

guardians of our history

As natural as we to nudity,

rising, falling waves…

among rocks by the sea

Lovers, like fishes set free

from glass cages,

guardians of our history

Witness Apollo frantically

planting kisses …

among rocks by the sea

Careworn, fickle humanity

tearing out its pages,

guardians of our history

among rocks by the sea

[Cornwall, June 2009]

Copyright R. N. Taber 2009

[Note: This poem appears in my collection Tracking the Torchbearer, Assembly Books, 2012]]

Shell Seekers

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

I have changed the appearance of this poem from the original version that appears in my collection which I first posted here on the blog in 2007. It is no reflection on the original poem (that has also appeared in other poetry publications) but I felt it was crying out for a makeover of sorts. Some readers, I know, prefer the original version which was always well received when I read it at several poetry readings around the UK. Listeners, of course, unlike readers, are oblivious to how a poem is laid out so hopefully people will like the later version as much as if not more than its predecessor. You are welcome to judge (and let me know) which version you prefer.

Any changes to original poems will appear in revised eds. that I plan to bring out in a few years, but in e-format.

You can see/hear me reading the (revised) poem in an early video on my You Tube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj2HSJCvvBo

If the link does not work, either go to mu You Tube channel and search under title:

http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaberOR 

for those of you who tell me you often cannot access You Tube for one reason or another, I have also posted the video here. (See below.)

Meanwhile, especially for Tony, Adam, Kylie and Roxanne from ‘Somewhere in the middle of nowhere’:

Original version (1991):

SHELL SEEKERS

No harder thing I do than loving you
at a distance as of sea and sand
at the going out of each tide,
at each coming up of the sun,
all the colours of morning strung
like prayer beads across the sky,
a benediction! You and I
as footprints on the shore;
Together. Parting. Wiped out.
Another tide, another morning,
another day - someone's searching
who'll know that we were here;
Beyond time and space,
false perimeters of place,
our love well-preserved
nor finer served than
by a shell's poetry, as
restless as the sea,
deceptive as each dawn

Like prayer beads, to
each our own

Revised version (2018):

SHELL SEEKERS

No harder thing I do
than loving you at a distance
as of sea and sand
at the going out of each tide,
each coming up of the sun;
all the colours of morning strung
like prayer beads
across the sky, a benediction!
You and I, footprints
on the shore; together, parting,
wiped out

Another tide,
another morning, another day
and others searching
who will know for sure
we were here

Beyond time and space,
and false perimeters of place,
our love no better served
than preserved in a shell's poetry,
as restless as the open sea,
all the more splendid for that
than any sunset or dawn,
for the dreaming or waking up
with a growing affinity
for all the seasons of life, love
and nature

Like prayer beads,
to each our own interpretation
and/or inspiration;
so, too, the ages-old poetry
of seashells

Copyright R. N. Taber 1999; 2018

[Note: The earlier version of this poem appears in  Love And Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2000.]

Casualties of Contemporaneity

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

[Update (Sept 3, 2016): I fully support the Junior Doctors past and proposed strike action even though it will probably mean appointments for which I have already been waiting for a long time will be put back yet again among thousands of other people’s. It is all very well for Prime Minister, Theresa May  and Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt to say we have more doctors than ever and the NHS is better funded than ever, but they are among the privileged classes who don’t have to wait months for an appointment or sit around in A & E for hours.  

Government ministers keep reminding us that the UK has an ageing population, but they clearly don’t have a clue as to how much stress that (and immigration) places on the NHS. As for the BMA (British Medical Association) apparently telling the Junior Doctors they should not strike, clearly it is in its best interest not to antagonise a Government more concerned with supporting the Establishment than the welfare of the ordinary man, woman and child in the street, for all Mrs May's fine words to the contrary. Well, no surprises there. Politicians are hot on rhetoric, but when it comes to relating to the world as it is for ordinary people, a significant number are cold fish.] - RNT

Now, all credit and thanks to hospital staff in the UK and around the world; the vast majority do a great job in what are often very stressful circumstances. (Too many patients and not enough staff to name but two.) Even so, I suspect there are few among us who haven’t had to endure a frustrating wait in Accident and Emergency Departments at some time or another.

Whatever, we would all do well to remember that our NHS is the envy of the world while those who abuse it should remember that it is not a free-for-all service, but paid for by those of us who pay into it all our working lives.

CASUALTIES OF CONTEMPORANEITY

No losing heart over fortune or fame
only that someone call my name;
might as well be the Invisible Man
for all anyone’s paying attention;
hours passing, hands on a clock keen
to mock our growing impatience;
(Time, alas, has little or no feeling
for outpatients)

From someone in the next chair,
an outpouring of despair;
on the other side, news of someone
who has just died;
a red-faced man making a big fuss
gets seen before the rest of us;
mutterings of acrimony overtaken
by a drunk causing havoc

Staff acting beyond call of duty
to end our panic;
a young woman in the front row,
waters breaking...
wheel-chaired away, partner flapping
and fretting,
can’t help wondering, girl or boy?
(Welcome distraction...)

Anxious to convey why we’re here, ;
in pain, tearful...
fearful of things getting worse
in spite of reassurance...
from that nice blond nurse, ready smile
and eyes a lively green
fooling no one. Some leaving without
being seen, dare I risk it?

Could murder a biscuit, a cup of tea too,
and need the loo;
ears prick up for a name, another,
pray be mine soon…
Just want to go home, but hurt all over,
must stay, wait my turn, can't face
all this angst again, could even be dead
by then...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2018

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'Casualty' in The Third Eye: poems by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004; revised edition in e-format in preparation.]

Cracking The Code

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

What is life all about? Why are we here at all? Well, who really cares about why?

Me, I feel we should make the most of life as it comes, take the bad with the good and try to come through it all a better person.

If I had to point to just one reason for living, it would have to be love. I guess that's why I have written so many poems about love, loving and being loved.

CRACKING THE CODE

Come a time we die, who’ll know
or care (for long) that once we walked
this earth, whose mother gave birth
to this or that child-person as likely as not
spending a lifetime seeking answers
to questions where there are none, love
taunted by tales of make-believe,
peace where there’s but pain for knowing
how things might have been
but for those wasted chances, missed
opportunities, wrong calls
as a loaded dice falls on ego’s gaming board,
lost chords of pretty songs intended
to make rights out of petty wrongs (and worse)
but merely adding fuel to flames
erasing names from movie tapes of memory
wherein we can love, live forever?

Let it be said, once we're dead and gone,
here's living proof of people walking the Earth,
giving water-birth to brave worlds of words,
never quite grasped for principle or purpose
ghosts lending creativity to the mind
and tongue (hopefully, someone ‘staking
the trouble to write it down for others
to make sense, crack the code, even learn
from our mistakes, replace a lost chord
or two, redefine the fragility of happiness
as variations on a theme of loneliness

Be humanity selfish, selfless, false or true,
flowers of the forest made to cry …
blessed am I whose life brought me to you
and you to me though, yes, we die

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2010

[Note: This poem has been  slightly but significantly revised from the original as it appears in 1st eds. of A Feeling For The Quickness Of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005; 2nd ed. in preparation.]

Potential for Escape

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

There is a strong case for associating depression with the weather, especially here in the UK, not renowned for its sunshine. The sad truth is that any of us can fall victim to depression any time, anywhere. It is usually the result of various tensions that life has a nasty habit of laying like animal traps for us to fall into. We feel isolated, threatened, scared and - perhaps worst of all - helpless.

Breaking free is never easy and will take time. Whenever it (frequently) happens to me I struggle to take my cue from that old truism, ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’. The first giant step, of course is recovering that will; the next, finding the way, then we need to stick at it, no matter what.

It’s never easy. There are no quick fixes. Anti-depressants, counselling/ therapy...these can help along with (even more important) the support and understanding (and patience) of family and friends. Sadly, too few people have much understanding of depression unless they have been depressed themselves or are close to someone else who is prone to depression. Far too many run a mile from mental health matters.

Society could and should do more to promote Mental Health Awareness. Yes, where there’s a will, there really IS a way….but it’s down to us.

Someone recently asked why I often write about depression in my poems as it is such a depressing subject! Well, apart from trying to raise Mental Health Awareness, writing positively about depression helps me beat the frequent bouts from which I continue to suffer.

Many years ago, I began the long, slow, painful climb out of a nervous breakdown.  I swore I would never hit rock bottom again. If  just one poem can help prevent just one person descending to that same pit's stone slab bottom, it will have been worth the writing.

POTENTIAL FOR ESCAPE

I lie in a pit staring up at the sky,
wondering if cloud faces passing by
can see my lips move (no sound)
might even let someone know where
to find me, so cold, frightened,
unable to move, every limb refusing
to answer frantic screams for help
from a mind whose live connections
all but severed by its distress

Clinging on to a failing willpower,
I feel my frail grasp slipping in this,
what must surely be my coffin?
Yet, it’s not my past I see unfolding
before my eyes, only blank sheets
of paper…slowly coming to life, words
I can’t quite make out but vaguely
recognize shapes comprising a prose
and poetry ascribed to nature

All my eyes cannot see, my heart
begins to acknowledge as the words
(now bombarding all my senses)
demand entry at the doors of a mind
shut by fear and excuses, forcing
it ajar, piling in like old friends arriving
at a reunion, figures in clouds
assuming human form, Earth Mother
resolving to be kind but firm

Hostage, seeking to break free (again)
from a dark prison called depression

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010