Red brick, from the corridors.
Stillness must seep into their veins
Everyone who sits on them is waiting, bored
making the bricks sad with their weight.
the hours must leave furrows on them,
like heavy metal grinding over soft rocks, marking them down.
empty rivulets of sand,
benumbed to their own violation.
she cannot stop her boyfriend
she doesn't want to 'suck him off' but she doesn't want to upset him
its Valentine's, not worth a fight.
Where does the line of desire stop,
does it go far?
Dreams have time for questions
but she doesn't ask him.
She is Time
She dreams of red-bricks from the Department
They could be her lovers; they should be.
Damned to sharing it,
they cannot force intimacy on anyone.
Had they resisted
they might allow their aggressor the audacity
and the category of a rapist.
P.S; The corridor where everyone sits outside class, has red bricks under the concrete platform on which we sit and chat, and where, on a particular cold January afternoon, the sunlight falling on one's thighs can be more than the meaning of the word 'orgasmic'. The above poem was written on the thirteenth of February, and was put up first on my blog.
This is something I wrote for the magazine when they asked for entries on "Life before and after MA" but it couldn't be published because I was a little late. Anyway, its nothing, just a couple of lines. here goes:
So much of what we read, what we are supposed to work on, think about, is about desire. An excess or a lack of it. Either a divergence from or a convergence on it. Or love. Even pain can be derived from there. And yet people say that MA is 'depressing', that everyone is estranged from one another here.
Too much theory has made voyeurs out of lovers, deadened us to any real emotion, any real praxis. Everything can be read or written about, in a novel, play, poem or essay. Or so we think. People who deal with words, rhetoric, syllables, do not do enough to deserve a life entirely devoid of substance, or do they?
"Oppressed by the figures of beauty" is a line from Chelsea Hotel No. 2, a song by Leonard Cohen. It has more than a tangential parallel with our classroom.
-Anonymous
What I write is not mine, it belongs to tradition. Not the tradition I've read, but the tradition I am.
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Well..its been a thought-provoking read of your post.I wonder if my interpretation coincides with your intention behind writing the poem (but then it doesn't always have to!)- but i am awed by a certain audacity in your writing.....yes, of replete sexual imagery but it also has a sense of things-aren't-as-they-seem to it. (especially with clauses like "..or do they?".... "Or so we think") No offence, I just found it interesting.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the rape of the Red Bricks..makes for a unique thought. The real world that comprises of 'her' boy friend is a deadening experience for her(though she still wants to keep the saving illusion-and not fight with him on Valentine's...) This leads her to an intimacy with the non-living world(the red bricks) which brings her a meta-physical kind of a solace and an escape. But then she is sharing the bricks which she intends to make hers with everyone else.
The red bricks could be a metaphor for an escape into the MA world that you don't find 'depressing' or 'estranging'..a world, where 'she' is trying to find new meaningful relationships as opposed to the outer world she fails to connect to.
When I wrote that something about MA is estranging, it was not a reference to the course content-or to the people who dealt with 'words, syllables or rhetoric' and thus were doomed to a world of fixed meanings. The reference was to a failure on our part to connect with each other and a lack of interaction(that translates into the unconnectedness of the larger world)that didn't spring up in BA days(for me),because of various factors.....
On a lighter note,
I wonder if I made sense or if it appears as some senseless banter--out of context!
OK, Im happy you thought about the poem. If anything, at least its generating interpretations. And its better if yours is different from mine or anyone else's.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I dont mean that you referred to the course content. Its just the whole thing about being trained in "Literature", doesnt matter if its BA or MA or M.Phil. Thats what I was referring to when I railed against form, rhetoric and syllables. I dont consider myself as different from the 'people' who complain about the estrangement in our class. I feel it too, sometimes more than others. Its just that its stopped bothering me anymore. Like many other things.
you made perfect sense. And even if it was just banter- why should it be senseless?
I appreciate your time and your thoughts.
Cheers.
Right..I see your point now, regarding the 'estrangement' debate.I guess I was barking up the wrong tree,for a while!
ReplyDelete