Raj Arumugam Poems

a cry calls poetry;
a movement brings forth poetry;
an anguish, a pleasure
a response, a conditioning
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Chuang Tzu has a dream
and when awake
he asks himself if, perhaps, this is the dream
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yes, I know I’m a bad boy
mothers told their kids:
don’t talk to that boy
he thinks too much and
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a thought flies by in the mind
like a cloud past the moon;
like a bird flying just above
or like a cyclist past you
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sitting outside my house
enjoying the cool air
and eating a 10-kg sack of onions
doing what is most natural
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did you want
to say
something
to me?
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all we have are flowers
and water and earth and fire
when we die;
and all our certainties
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early morning
at Park Road
the diaspora-clouds hang
and the cold, thin rain drops on the deserted road
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tongue poems (the complete text of 3 poems in the tongue poems series)
text © 2009, Raj Arumugam
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…look up at the sky – Oh, do look up at the sky…look up at the sky that stretches in all directions and wherever one may turn…look up at the sky all above and that falls beyond the end of the visible earth…look up at the sky that stretches beyond one’s vision and look beyond the sky into limitless space…

…see, time and care and the narrowness of one’s conditioning confine one and bends one’s mind – as one’s back is bent, and one’s neck is loaded down; and one’s eyes are fixed to the spotlight-defined meters as one stands one’s ground…Oh, but just look up at the sky…
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