Raj Arumugam Poems

What holds things together?
He thought
his passions and his interests held things together.
He thought he was resourceful and strong
...

Are you not done yet with these people?
Have your people not hunted them and killed
them like beasts and not shamed them enough?
Have you not taken and plundered too much already
...

Everything can cease... when confidence peters,
falls and breaks on granite boulders and scatters,
everything can cease. Things first slow down,
sputter and choke like a dirty burnt-out machine
...

It seems to hold out a ray
and the vague words
deny nothing while holding out time.
There is mention of a flood of applications.
...

You've got the wrong man,
can't you see?
Don't stop me,
you unemployed at the mall,
...

What will the morning bring? Will it bring
any hope at all? Or will it still have
me lingering round the phone
like an unemployed worker standing at the dock
...

These are not nightmares, painful thoughts
not complexes or deprivations or phobias
but just memories that linger
in the recesses and folds
...

You're not going to take mine away
you're not going to get me down
with your polite replies and silences
with your civilized condescension
...

These days I'm going it alone
I'm seated in the train that roars past
concrete and earth and dirt and buildings
and that enters darkness and into light and darkness again.
...

At the Valley
in China Town
stands a man alone
with half a smile in his lips
...