marcsundar

[marcsundar]

Design

Leaning forward i knelt by the standing pose of seat front

Gripping a squish ball, designed specifically to grunt

My phone vibrated, sat upon a coaster made of diamond-faux

Calls to this number are for passionate, wheat like dough

-and then came the desertion, bright as the rain.

The car designed to kill/murder/slaughter me pauses at a gap

Tall and slim-fat felt buildings produce a nautical wide tap

Constantly, like a mind playing punters on a field of sleepers

Small neck, wider trunks rings a game of smiles and weepers

-and as if by design the comma ceased/disappeared.

Lizard king alert! Baubles and dazzling tankards cry wolf

A toothless and brazen judgemental fight; the despised dolf

Teached then taught the less known variation of a glimpsed church

Ready for near perfect reason to leave thy, thoroughly, in the lurch

-and one would say there is no design to have fall

[marcsundar]

Would you let me in your engine room

If you hadn't seen it, I would've

It's not my art but your car. Let's go somewhere

Time/tampon

I wanted you for breakfast. I wanted to taste you and sweat inside your body. Schedule of implants. Mess/echo.

If it wasn't something I could shake from my mind. If it was loud. It felt terminal. So I dreamed of trains.

For a while I felt ok I remembered the green pasties Turning battery acid milky

Did you get to be an oval Did you remember the shape you were when you were going into the door

No one gets to let their sigh out, it has to be contained

Maybe you would've gone off to build a world for yourself, like I did

[marcsundar]

The heart lies fallow,

Sordid muscle

once fertile

wild roses bloomed there,

now thorns to draw blood.

The sky is muted pastels,

the artist gave up halfway

and left the canvas incomplete.

hands entwined in a dream I cannot enter.

Their laughter drifts like petals on a wind

I no longer feel…

[marcsundar]

I romanticized the darkest parts of my life, painted pain into shades of poetry, and turned heartache into something beautiful.

I made my suffering feel softer, more bearable, as if giving it meaning could take away the sting.

But some nights, no amount of pretty words can disguise the darkness.

- Daria Synn

[marcsundar]

Want

by Joan Larkin

She wants a house full of cups and the ghosts of last century’s lesbians; I want a spotless apartment, a fast computer. She wants a woodstove, three cords of ash, an axe; I want a clean gas flame. She wants a row of jars: oats, coriander, thick green oil; I want nothing to store. She wants pomanders, linens, baby quilts, scrapbooks. She wants Wellesley reunions. I want gleaming floorboards, the river’s reflection. She wants shrimp and sweat and salt; she wants chocolate. I want a raku bowl, steam rising from rice. She wants goats, chickens, children. Feeding and weeping. I want wind from the river freshening cleared rooms. She wants birthdays, theaters, flags, peonies. I want words like lasers. She wants a mother’s tenderness. Touch ancient as the river. I want a woman’s wit swift as a fox. She’s in her city, meeting her deadline; I’m in my mill village out late with the dog, listening to the pinging wind bells, thinking of the twelve years of wanting, apart and together. We’ve kissed all weekend; we want to drive the hundred miles and try it again.

[marcsundar]

Migrant Partisan

As non-partisan i consulted the landowner

Admittedly, I didn't proud, i did not preach

Prosecutions, I pronounced that thy shall fight those white defendants!

In kin i produce on the thought that slowed the expulsion

Damn, its a bitter whale top follow

In a situation believed to be the occasion that I pushed out

A vision of safety, of success... but not for all, only some

Yes indeed... quiet... fair enough, it's not every Empire's cup o' tea

I surround my mind with the folding that enables no looking on.

Wrap whisky, vodka in my throat. The partisan won't know, they aren't as experienced

[marcsundar]

200-2323

Friday night

the moon hangs still

and the world don't stop,

Security shutters block

discount dreams from wandering

in the parking lot of the dollar store

everything is affordable

happiness is improbable

the future feels like a lottery ticket

the odds are impossible

but you scratch that itch

I see you looking

from streetlight to streetlight

you won't find angels

in summer's sodium vapor halos

plastic bags in the back seat

hold sad necessities bought

and maybe you should just

get a beer have a cigarette

this is real life

tonight won't change

anything for anyone here

it's so much easier to sleep

if you can pretend

that you don't care anyway

[marcsundar]

SLOWLY

tell me when you wake up

say a drafty window is what i mean

a term used for a group of anything

a love of homeless people

a smell of piss

yes the train is still running

im on it right now to see you

shift my body into smoke

and mirrors and biggest lies

a wake of never ending slumber

where i wait motionless for you

and by you i mean anyone

and by anyone there is only you

against my chest wanting

something to happen

feel a weight release for it all

to come crashing down quietly

and loud as fuck

other ways for me to say i want

this but also let me tell you

something else

and kiss my neck

and be there tomorrow

[marcsundar]

why do all the words sound heavier in my native language?

—  @metamorphesque, Yoojin Grace Wuertz (Mother Tongue), Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky (by Garth Greenwell), Jhumpa Lahiri (Translating Myself and Others), @lifeinpoetry

˗ˏˋ☕ˎˊ˗        

[marcsundar]

flowertreesunrisesunset

I am compulsion with a

Camera clicking moments

Hoard the treasure, someday

Pictures will be all that's left

Keep comfort close, creature

You know the way your heart

Cracks open, spilling sadness

The sea leaks from your eyes

You are a million leagues below

Remembering how

To drown

[marcsundar]

The weight of memory drags my shoulders down. I take a string and stack everyone I've ever known and loved like beads, pearl on pearl on pearl. And when they leave- because leaving is one certainty we're burdened with, and when they leave- I clutch the pearls and try to breathe. I remember it all, even things I've forgotten. Some nights, I dream of smiles and faces and laughs, my best friend at 7, the first boy I ever liked, my grandma on the patio- pearls on pearls on pearls, boxes full of necklaces stacked in every corner of my heart. The weight of the world on my shoulders- is that what is left of us in the end, memories stuffed in pearls, waiting to be worn?

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from the The Flesh I Burned

[marcsundar]

I used to be so much better

[marcsundar]

exceptions // 8.19.2023

[marcsundar]

Aleatory

Blind envy unto iron attentively cast

& cooled — never mind how brittle

its shell might end up (I bear enough

—

fissures come from my own aleatory

formation). Too, at least those sorts

of fragile constructs keep deliberate

—

intentions poured amongst their taut

anatomies, achingly contrasting these

bones seeming arranged by no design

@nosebleedclub July Prompts 24. mold

[marcsundar]

The all singing dancing Asian man.

Fluttered, paused.

He looked principal.

His daughter watched; the weight of fracture showed on her once plump face.

He shone. Honestly, it was not what I expected.

This was a celebration, but I was told by default that this was for death.

Confused I rejoiced in the knowledge that someone.

common

...Can rise and give performance like he did.

They said he was in a film. A movie.

I battled an inner demon of ordinary.

I slightly nodded to his ashes though I hardly knew him.

The feeling is a good one, its unusual that, for me. But it’s a good one.

[marcsundar]

Lilacs compose the shadow, a sudden startle and swoon of nesting sparrows - I watch them, feeling the slow, rickety way my body makes as it trespasses into another decade. Windows shutter themselves, winds whine like worried cats at the door. I desire, before all else - someone to figure it all out for me, to not be the one who has to answer.

[marcsundar]

Planet Trest

The green food bin regales our trust

in it

Less is more here, we want to save the planet

We frolicked in a local park feeding ducks and such

and I secretly believed in better things that can't come quicker!

The grey general bin regales our trost

in it

More or less - we want to save the planet

We blew a massive balloon then filled it with concrete

and I premeditated the evening wine longing my way to the kicker!

The blue recycling bin regales our trist

in it

Less is more here, we want to save the planet

We spent time going over what is important with pride

and I went quietly away to stick fingers in my throat to be sicker!

The green garden waste bin regales our trast

in it

More or less - we want to save the planet

We spread ourselves with peanut butter and creme fraiche

and I tip-toed away proving to many that my red blood is thicker!