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The Barred and Bolted
Poet: Dr. Alireza Bemanian
|February 2, 2026
© www.bemanian.com
Barred, bolted, the forbade promises and testimonies, evidences and declarations, crest of forgotten pledges and vows, streams to flow, obstacles solely to defer, fluids to march, repentances, remorse, penitence merely stand to deter.
The relentless elixir, poking and prodding mental and social alchemy, unyielded simmering and seething, twinkling and flicking horizons, the distances, spheres and scopes, keen and perceptive to be confounded, conquered, and captured, the meshes, patterns, precedents, would be exhibited, and revealed.
The winds blow to unlock and unbolt the gaps, booths, and spaces, intellects, wits and souls, personalities, ambiances and passions, shall dominate, direct and govern, the stern and somber decoys decimate, grim and grave potencies, are precedents and replicas to thaw and melt.
Irresolvable, dreadful and unviable, the intolerable deeds and feats, the torrents, bubbles and froths are meant to recede, presumed, alleged, and postulated pursuits, the quests and chases, vibrating needs, the changes and breaks, amendments and conversions, swop and swap, the hide and seek, the ensuing spread and reach.
Joys and delights, ecstasies and elations, the thrills and raptures, cracks on the walls, openings in sky, and drizzling rain saturating the dew, toddlers and tots, nourishing assets and their cultivating sums, do always entail, joyous and jubilant adoring ballads and songs.
The passages, clauses and episodes, stroll by, saunter and amble, meander and wander, drift and roll, coast and roam, and rove and rage——— sunshine and shadows dwell and judge, abide and intone, to prefigure and derive, the patterns, arrays, and outlines, the dance, frolic, the rhumba and tangle imprinted within perceptive wits.
Echoes and ricochets, rebounds and resonances, rallies and caucuses, inebriate and hypnotize, mesmerize and enthrall, windows to brilliance, occasions to stalk, and the outlooks to guard——— priorities, primacies, and urgencies, alter, amend, and vary, the texture, grain, and consistency, to be fulfilled, matched, and achieved.
Crudeness, fitness, and smoothness, flicker, flash, trace or sketch——— storms, squalls, inborn and innate, mantles and facades seek and request, inherent and intrinsic, the tensions or strains, streams and spurs not to spare, the impetus, goad, and spur, intrude, encroach, to shunt and propel.
Elisions and purges, erase and flake, not to allege clarity and sense, it is the murmur, the urge and impulse, to excavate, exhume and enter——— life, kick, vivacity and verve, continue, protract, persist and alter, the shadow of her, remains intact, to join her league, extend and expand.
Alireza Bemanian • February 2, 2026 • © www.bemanian.com
Themes & Interpretations
The Alchemy of Self-Confinement
“The relentless elixir, poking and prodding mental and social alchemy” — Dr. Bemanian locates the prison-keeper within the prisoner. Unlike the locked doors and iron chains of conventional confinement literature, the “barred and bolted” state is generated by the self’s own chemical processing of experience. The poem’s four stanzas of mounting pressure before the breakthrough formally enact this claim: the reader must experience the full duration of self-generated confinement before liberation becomes possible or believable.
Liberation Through Aperture
“Cracks on the walls, openings in sky, and drizzling rain saturating the dew” — freedom arrives through small, sensory apertures rather than dramatic demolition. The drizzle that saturates rather than storms, the crack rather than the crumbling wall: Dr. Bemanian proposes that self-generated confinement must be dissolved from within by patient accumulation, not shattered by force. The “stern and somber decoys” that “decimate” once recognized demonstrate that the most formidable barriers may require only identification, not destruction.
The Verb Cascade
“Stroll by, saunter and amble, / meander and wander, drift and roll, coast and roam, and rove and rage” — nine verbs of movement perform the freedom they describe. This cascade enacts liberation kinetically: the reader experiences what it means to be unconfined through the sheer plurality of available motions. Dr. Bemanian includes “rage” as one of freedom’s valid expressions — anger that can move freely, rather than seethe in containment, becomes simply another mode of the liberated self.
The Intrinsic Storm
Storms are “inborn and innate” — not external events that batter the self but constitutive conditions of being. The poem’s extended opening of mounting pressure gives full experiential weight to this claim: turbulence is not incidental but essential. The breakthrough does not eliminate the storm; it redirects it. “The impetus, goad and spur, intrude, encroach, to shunt and propel” — what confined becomes what drives. The poem proposes that the intrinsic storm is not the enemy of the journey but its necessary fuel.
The Shadow’s League
“The shadow of her, remains intact, to join her league, extend and expand” — the poem’s final revelation transforms everything that preceded it. The journey from confinement to liberation was not abstract but specific: the freedom sought was the freedom to enter an ongoing enterprise. Dr. Bemanian reframes elegy from backward-looking memorial into forward-facing collaboration. The shadow persists not as memory to be mourned but as a league to be joined — what she began continues, and the liberated self can now extend and expand it.