Régis Debray

July 25, 2021

The 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

 

 

 

Umar Nizarudeen

Umar Nizarudeen is with the University of Calicut, India. He has a PhD in Bhakti Studies from the Centre for English Studies in JNU, New Delhi. His poems have been published in Vayavya, Muse India, Culture Cafe Journal of the British Library, Ibex Press Year's Best Selection, and also broadcast by the All India Radio.

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