Quiet Man Drained Poem by Raj Arumugam

It is two a.m. and I wake to the cold
and the silence and the anonymous darkness.
The mind
I am not the thinker
moves from in between states to full awareness
and it grips at my pits so. What is this feeling?
What is this pain and emptiness? It churns the entrails
and takes waves to hit hard against the cave of the head
and the creature living inside has to take all the pain.
Full awareness. Panic.
The street lights invade between the curtain sheets
and stretch their long orange fingers on the wall.
They find nothing. The sliver
in the sky is cold.
Full awareness. Panic.
Man in Panic...
Not Man Asleep... Not Man Dreaming... But Man in Panic...
Oh, for some pebbles in the mouth...some hard thing
in the hands to grip; some straw even, something to clutch at
or perhaps, dare one say? some hope... It is two a.m.
and I wake to the cold.
She is sleeping in bed and the two children in theirs.
I survey the enclosed rooms, the locked-in home,
sit in the dark hall,
harass a stray ant in the kitchen and sit in the hall...
There is little hint of an outside world but
of an invisible pushing away...
What time is it now?
Is it the sun that rises yonder?
Of my philosophy I make no use to quiet the mind;
I lie down again.
No, not man in panic.
Mot man asleep. Not man Dreaming. Not Man in Panic.
Not Man Dreaming.
Man Quiet. Man Drained.






(from The Migrant - notes of a newcomer (February 1997- July 1998))