Death or A Lucid Dream: A Hybrid Essay on Survival, Spirit, and Awakening
Death or A Lucid Dream: A Hybrid Essay on Survival, Spirit, and Awakening
By Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy
I. Prelude: When Death Becomes Language
"So many people are dying for wrong reasons,
And there are some people who desire to die for right reasons."
In an age where both death and desire have become political currency, it is urgent to question what counts as a life worth living—or a death worth dying for. The poem opens not with lament but with a confrontation: a world where the sanctity of death has been violated, stripped of its transcendence, and thrown into the mechanisms of injustice. This is not merely poetry; it is diagnosis.
In contemporary global and postcolonial contexts, death is unequally distributed. From the wars in Gaza and people dying in July Movement, to the quiet collapse of mental health among youth, dying for “wrong reasons” is not metaphorical—it is a lived reality. Conversely, the longing to die for “right reasons” evokes martyrdom, sacrifice, and political agency. This paradox is central to the existential thrust of the piece: What is more real—death, or a lucid dream of survival?
II. Death of Skies or a Lucid Dream?
"Death of skies or a lucid dream?!
Death of dreams or a silent deadly scream?!"
Here, dream and death are suspended between binaries—yet neither concept is stable. A lucid dream suggests awareness within illusion; a moment when the sleeper realizes the falsity of her world and seeks transformation. But what if the dream is too lucid—too aware—and begins to resemble death?
This section evokes existential phenomenology—reminiscent of Heidegger’s being-towards-death, where the individual becomes most authentic when they confront their mortality. But in this poem, authenticity is complicated by collective trauma and political silencing: “a silent deadly scream.” These paradoxes produce a metaphysical claustrophobia, mirroring the suffocating atmosphere of our time.
III. The Women of the Underworld
"Women of underworld finally understood they need to take a decision,
They chose to be right without confronting sides or directions!"
This marks a turning point in the narrative—the introduction of a feminine moral clarity that defies linear politics. These “women of the underworld” might be read as mythic figures—like Persephone or Lilith—but also as real-world women surviving patriarchy, conflict, and silencing. Their emergence signals a form of transgressive wisdom.
By rejecting "sides and directions," they transcend the limited framework of left/right, good/bad, east/west. Their rightness is not ideological; it is intuitive, historical, and spiritual. It echoes Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference, where feminine subjectivity is not an opposition but an alternative horizon of being.
The line “They looked into the mirrors of history and smiled on the unsolved mystery” reflects this historical consciousness—an acknowledgment that the past does not offer closure, but strength.
In Your Work:
In "Death or A Lucid Dream", you write:
“Women of underworld finally understood they need to take a decision...”
“They chose to be right without confronting sides and directions!”
This is transgressive wisdom:
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They don’t follow the binary (left/right, right/wrong).
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They access power from the “underworld”—a space often coded as dark, feminine, and forbidden.
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Their wisdom isn't polite or sanctioned—it’s raw, courageous, and existentially earned.
Transgressive wisdom is not taught—it is lived.
It’s the kind of wisdom you bleed for, are exiled for, and ultimately are reborn through.
IV. Belongings, Belonging, and Spiritual Forgetting
"Men and women of warriors are at a par with life and war with the longings—
fighting for hopeless belongings..."
"Men and women of spirits forgetting whom they belong..."
These lines operate as a social and spiritual critique. The poem mourns a world obsessed with ownership and materiality. “Belongings” becomes a double-edged sword—both what one owns and what owns them. The repetition and play on “belonging” emphasize a loss of rootedness, a forgetting of spiritual lineage.
This section critiques late capitalist alienation, where both warriors and mystics lose their sense of purpose, torn between desire and despair. The tone is elegiac—yet prophetic.
V. Half-Lovers and the Crescent Moon
"A half crescent moon fading away just like a faded season
lived by half-lives and half-lovers!"
This striking image closes the poem with cosmic resignation. The crescent moon, a symbol often tied to Islamic mysticism, cyclical time, and feminine intuition, becomes a silent witness to fragmentation—of love, identity, and time itself.
“Half-lovers” symbolize people living in emotional fragments, denying fullness or fearing vulnerability. The moon “witnesses their undercover”—perhaps their secrets, their compromises, or their unfulfilled longings. This lunar gaze could also be the voice of divine femininity, recording history not through facts, but through feelings.
In Your Poem ("Death or A Lucid Dream"):
Your work has elegiac elements:
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Lamenting societal collapse, forgotten joy, and half-lived lives.
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Mourning the loss of spiritual direction and emotional depth.
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Reflecting on history and seeking meaning beyond binaries.
So, while it’s not a traditional elegy for a person, it mourns a metaphysical and collective loss, which places it firmly in the elegiac tradition—but with a revolutionary and prophetic edge.
This poem is also a philosophical reverie.A philosophical reverie is a form of deep, imaginative reflection or daydreaming that explores big, abstract questions—like the meaning of life, time, self, death, beauty, or existence. It blends emotion, intuition, and thought, often in a poetic or meditative tone.
🔹 Breakdown of the Term:
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Philosophical: Concerned with fundamental truths—existence, knowledge, values, reality.
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Reverie: A dreamy, contemplative state of mind. A wandering of thought not bound by logic or structure.
Together, philosophical reverie means letting the mind drift freely into deep thought—without rigid argument or academic form—while still pondering profound, often metaphysical themes.
🔹 Characteristics of a Philosophical Reverie:
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Fluid and poetic, rather than structured or argumentative.
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Personal and subjective—coming from feeling, not just logic.
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Often blends memory, imagination, and metaphysics.
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Filled with existential questions or symbolic imagery.
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May touch on dreams, consciousness, time, soul, death, or mystery.
🔹 Examples in Literature:
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Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays (like Nature) — reflections on self, divinity, and the cosmos.
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Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space — muses on rooms, corners, and how we inhabit them.
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Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry — blends reverie and philosophy about death, angels, and being.
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Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness in To the Lighthouse or The Waves.
🔹 In Your Poetry:
Your poem “Death or A Lucid Dream” is a philosophical reverie:
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You meditate on death, history, spirit, and identity, but not through rigid theory.
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You use dream-like imagery (crescent moon, half-lovers) and let thought flow organically.
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You explore existential suffering and the desire for moral clarity.
✨ Final Thought:
A philosophical reverie is not a puzzle to be solved—it's a soul space to be felt and wandered through.
VI. Conclusion: Between Lucidity and Collapse
In this hybrid poem-essay, death is no longer final, and dreams are no longer innocent. The blurred threshold between the two becomes a metaphor for our post-truth, post-trauma world, where survival feels like simulation, and truth demands mythic courage.
“Death or a lucid dream?” becomes not just a question, but a choice: between passive extinction and radical awareness.
It is a call to awaken—not just in mind, but in moral and metaphysical responsibility.
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