Poetry

Beyond Unspoken Words:
Of Sticks, Stones and Bullies

A Poem by PARVINDER MEHTA

 

 

 

This poem is a response to numerous real-life incidents of bullying against young minds aspiring to learn in life. The narrator is a young, Sikh teenager boy who comes to terms with his experiences of bullying through affirmation, history and art.

 

Their taunts and foul looks,

hurtful shards of haunting slurs

seek to depress me to non-being.

The barrage of forceful punches,

the onslaught of knuckles and

those deliberate toggles to defeat me,

aim for my surrender to non-essence.

They attack me and my looks, an unfamiliar Sikh,

a paraphernalia beyond speculation.

 

Do I dare explain myself to them?

speak to those resounding, deaf ears

make them see their ill-illumined dungeons?

Why don’t they learn to know me?

Why don’t they know to learn me?

I roll my life - a crumpled paper

hidden in a deep pocket, crushed and

marked beyond recognition.

 

Holding onto this useless fragment

I lay it open in privacy.

Caressing its innocent creases

I recall those dangerous moments,

those arrows of hateful glances

and spears of vicious words,

those smirks while chewing meaningless gum,

those gibes at my long cherished hair,

and my curly black beard. They left invisible

fault lines on this paper, ingrained

with smudges beyond erasure.

 

Their onslaught on my being

rattled my body yet crushed not its spirit.

Their pouncing on my head to tousle

my patka, exposed my hair to their cruel

gaze of mockery and apathy.

My soft silky hair undone, shield my eyes from

their repugnance and repulsive wonderment.

They leave me alone with a puzzled look,

the cracked mirror in the locker shows me,

my reflections disfigured beyond repair.

 

Somehow, my faith confirms a steadfast

refusal to assimilate to their demands

of conformity. I walk the hallways

hoping for acceptance and freedom,

like naked feet avoiding the pierce of a

sharp broken glass. Those glances of

scrutiny fail to shake me as my iron bracelet

reminds me of resolve and affirming allegiance.

The teachers simply look at me as a puzzle

a riddle they never can know,

a strange artifact for their gaze, simply a

darkness of a cavernous maze

an intricacy beyond learning.

 

At home, I hold onto my life - these wasted papers

my globes of insignificant secrets,

collecting every day, unfolding their

crushed fragilities, caressing the wounds of

markedness and then binding them all together.

These shapeless spheres have mingled with

each other’s pain and hurt. The caressing

fingers at last found a meaning in this

origami of comfort beyond pain.

 

New shapes of resolve and firmness

appear magically as I begin to write

those hushed words and silent whispers.

Words spilling out of the rims of my heart,

their calm fury reminds me those other histories

of persecutions, of unknown strangeness

refusing to give in to tortures,

pressures of conversion and assimilation,

finding a way to define themselves

through sacrifice, rebellion and martyrdom,

a combat beyond oppression.

 

Remembering those subjections,

conversions, beheadings and declared deaths,

those histories of martyrdom and warriors,

I caress my wounds hidden in these globs of rejection,

patting their tattered folds every day.

Whispering the faint quivering of my heart,

I renew it with inner optimism.

A single tear seeps through

percolating the pain of histories

releasing bottled rage through blotted

letters as blue ink submerged in red

anger flows over, undrawing those marks of

miscognition, creating another art,

a calligraphy beyond rejection.

 

I wonder and hope for the day,

when they would value my existence,

know my reasons, my affirmations without

boxing me into orthodoxy or insularity.

My history of subjugation, meanwhile

nourishes my wounded soul,

as words emerge amidst blots of

grief and heal my unspoken pain.

Perhaps I am strong and tested,

perhaps I will win this battle

or perhaps I will be a martyr

beheaded by hate and oppression.

Till then I must go on

And follow my inner guidance

cherishing my heritage,

refusing to give in to injunctions and oversights

refusing to submit to recurrent oppression,

I will rise instead nobly as a young eagle

bravely learning to fly.

I will sing the clarion call to others

to shed the cacophony of jarring

hateful words and instead embrace

the mellow rhythms and musical strokes

creating a new art and articulation

beyond unspoken words.

 

 

Dr. Parvinder Mehta is a writer and an educator. She has taught English writing, literature and film courses at University of Toledo, Wayne State University and Davenport University. She has presented at various national and international conferences. Her publications have appeared earlier on sikhchic.com, as well as in Sikh Formations, South Asian Review and South Asian Diaspora. 

Parvinder Mehta © 

March 5, 2012

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