Ophelia

I am the forgotten

Ophelia

Lay down to a muddy death

Fallen off a willow tree

Balance was never a forte

Of a falling woman like me.

The sound of my water stifled weeps

Cannot be heard through the hasty beeps

Of impatient machines

Of a world where there is no grief

And everyone moves on

Easily.

I am disregarded

For a soliloquy

Victim to Hamlet’s

To be or not to be?

Ponderings that should not concern

A hysterical woman like me.

What dreams had you, Ophelia?

What agonies?

As you felt the water seep

And swallow you deep.

Even as it ruined

Your stockings and high heels?

I consider this poem almost incomplete. Having worked extensively on the question of the representation of women in literature this year, and especially on the question of melancholia and women, this is something I have been thinking about obsessively. Traditionally, female grief has always been degraded to the level of hysteria and madness. While male sorrow is somewhat more dignified and intellectual, often termed “melancholia”, depression among women has been an issue that has not been dealt with very well by male writers. Tragic female figures are always doomed to silence; either by death or madness. One such figure is Ophelia, victim to Hamlet’s selfishness. I had planned on writing something more serious and sympathetic, but what came out was something with an almost-tongue in cheek tone to it. Nevertheless, I ask myself what Ophelia would have done if she hadn’t been killed off by Shakespeare. Perhaps a question we should all ask ourselves.
For those of you who know me personally, you will inevitably link what I write about to what has been going on in my life. And while I cannot really put an end to such interpretations, I would like to say that words come not only from within, but also without. 

Falling Women

(A quick note before you proceed to the poem- the title “Falling Women” comes from Margaret Atwood’s book Cat’s Eye. She uses it elsewhere too, but a quick google search might suffice to understand the notion of Falling Women. Lulu is a character from Beckett’s short story, First Love or Premier Amour in which the narrator leaves Lulu as she is giving birth to their child and is never able to forget her cries. This little explanation will hopefully make it easier to read the poem, given how tedious poetry can be!)
And as once before,
A monster grows inside me. A poet
Threatens to make itself be born.
What is happening inside me cannot be
Denied or put off much longer
Part your legs and push push push
He never forgot Lulu’s cries.

I prepare in calculated bursts
To paddle myself Lethe wards
The liquid obliteration of images and words
And faces and touches and lies–
Till I am shrouded in an unwitting white
The colour of a purged woman
Draped as a new born child.

Tightly ,in clean and crisp sheets
That bear no stink of vulgar love.
“Has she eaten? Has she slept?
What happened to her?”
Whispers die around me.
I am the site of death and rebirth
Another hysterical woman.

Prone to sentimentality.
Whilst I suffer in my sick room,
I shall be handled and taken care of.
If only I were a regular Lady Lazarus
Splitting open veins habitually
And stitching them back up
Till what is unwanted flows and trickles away.

******

I am cursed with liberation
A modern woman, who knows better.
And like dinner, we will split the cost of this
And I shall be reimbursed for all expenses incurred
For I have my income, and you yours.
And I should know better, than to resort to words
Or worse still, feelings.

For a life is exterminable
And divisible. And always unwanted.
Syntheticity, the child of modern science
Was supposed to prevent natural growths.
Death can be bought
And they will clean up the mess
And that is all there is to it.

This is the lot of Falling Women
Trudging along treacherous men cliffs
Susceptible to loving.
Falling in love. Tumbling down it
Like a lost little Alice.
Swallowed whole by the downward vortex
Of gravity.

The falling must hit ground, sooner or later.
Wounds will be acquired.
Skin stitched back together like a jigsaw puzzle
A womb emptied.
All traces will be removed
This is what modern men and women do.
They move on.