Falling through the crack
If you ‘question’, you don’t understand.
If you ‘understand’, you’ve been co-opted.
If you ‘talk’, you’re sanctimonious.
If you ‘don’t talk’, you’re frivolous.
If you’re ‘in the field’, you’re too involved.
If you’re not ‘in the field’, you have no business talking about it.
If you ‘ask why’, you’re stupid.
If you ask ‘why not’, you’re very stupid.
If you ‘qualify’, you’re equivocating.
If you ‘don’t qualify’, you’re making sweeping generalisations.
If you ‘care’, you’re sentimentalising.
If you ‘don’t care’, you’re heartless and cruel.
If you ‘critique’, you need to cut them some slack.
If you don’t ‘critique’, you’re cutting them too much slack.
If you ‘believe’, you’re naive.
If you ‘don’t believe’, you’re cynical.
If you ‘do’, you’re damned.
If you ‘don’t', then you’re damned, too.
Every word shifts, slips, has many meanings.
Every word holds a gun to your head and asks: “Who are you? Declare yourself forthwith.”
I want a life without quotation marks.
*****
(posted in July last year)
Beautiful!
Comment by km — July 27, 2006 @ 5:53 pm
how perfectly contrary :)
Comment by bidi-k — July 28, 2006 @ 7:20 am
km, bidi-k, :))
Comment by uma — July 28, 2006 @ 1:56 pm
Wonderful poem. Could relate to every sentence. Good job, Uma.
Comment by Nithya — July 28, 2006 @ 4:00 pm
well uma, as richard feynman’s book says “what do you care what other people think?”.
nice poem though.
n!
Comment by neela — July 29, 2006 @ 2:37 am
Very profound, Uma. How often we spend our time trying to hold ourselves good in others’ eyes.. People find it so hard to live as they love to… Why dont we stop worrying about what we want “society” to think about us and worry about how to live the way each one of us want ourselves to?
Comment by Kishore — July 29, 2006 @ 5:55 am
Truly enjoyed it! Well-put!
Comment by Barnali — September 15, 2006 @ 8:04 pm