Umar NizarudeenThe thought of Régis Debray
Is not for everyone you know
Well, it’s complicated,
Each thought setting off
Trajectories multiple,
Prancing, forward
Régis Debray! we who are about to die
Salute thee, in the face of
Torture, death, impalement, castration
The phallus exists not
Soft spoken theory of the interim
Never have we, had it this good
The nakedness of power, and flesh
Four majesties guard the doors of mammon
Marx, Freud, Mao, Stalin
Dwarapalakas
Derrida, Foucault, Godard, Trotsky
Ashtadikpalakas
Haunting eyes set off the
Bullets red
Into wilds where eons coexist
Yet falsehoods don’t
The castrated rapists,
Slough off into the underbrush
Hissing at the feudal past, ascends
The humming future on its wings
Discarded index of
A lost totality.
Don’t cancel yet,
The Military Police mornings
Bayoneted musk
From testicles
Pores open in the wild
To sounds of death
You stiffen in pages
Splashed with liquors
The song dies, yet never lies
The music stalls, or the dance stops.
The ithyphallic gods demand justice
We say `no’
Or at least `come later’
The weird anxieties of
City folk
From convents, barracks,
`Dad’s in your navy-
an Admiral of the bleeding fleet!’
The infinite coition of revolutions
Blink back into darkness
In the dense underground
We chase your words
Keep them alive.
Bullets whoosh past
One hits the radiator
Of the jeep
Hot water splashes, a siren erupts
Effulgent visage of the forest
The cantankerous sunlight
Oozes bile
Rays too violet
For us normal folk
Independent, thinking,
Elite.
The Revolutionary Command salutes
Thought, in verse
As well as prose, or better both
Anchor us to the pillory
Then whip
The flayed stink of maroon flesh
Ripe for feasting
Eucharist
Dangle the skin in your face,
It’s vellum, you see
Sunburnt slate
With nervous ticks of neurons
That argue for Mao, but
Still wary about Stalin
Urethral insertions, of palm frond stems
Too painful a nightmare
Yet clasping Debray, we
Rock ourselves to sleep
In the midnightathon,
Alpha men succumb
To succubus
Debray in the darkness
Debray in the noon
Debray at night
Debray arrives to inquire
He brings eggs, milk, packets of rice
Mobile phones, cigarettes, batteries
The quartered ones are left behind
But we take everyone along
Sojourners in the sun
Back in school, and
Majestic hell!
Now massage chairs
Lull our frazzled nerves
Mermaids sing us to sleep
Gurus bring healing
Moms cooks us rice
Mouths prised open
Acid or water.
Intestines boil with pus
Overflowing canals
Salute our blood
Darkness corrupts
We read Debray
In this world and the next
Past lives flash past
Marching sounds come nearer
The fine dust of evening
Settles upon television sets
The parade unending
Upside down.
Tortured on a rope,
Beaten black and blue
The photos in the newspaper
Dharma of capitalism
Yet we keep on reading
Régis Debray in the night.
1. Régis Debray is a French revolutionary Marxist and philosopher
2. Dwarapalakas are statues of divine doorkeepers in temples of India
3. Ashtadikpalakas are guardians of the eight directions in a Hindu temple
