DIVYA MANIKANDAN - POEMS

Divya Manikandan is a resident of Bangalore, India, who is currently building her own poetic arsenal, painting as a form of meditation and creating short films as a form of expression. 
Literature is her means of escape from reality, however her reality has always been to become a surgeon.
Her work has been accepted for publishing by Plum Tree Tavern, EskimoPie and Red Eft review.

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​                                  BROKEN BARCODES

Broken barcodes everywhere,
we’re swung in the frenzy of our own consumerism.
We shun human trafficking, labelling acts
against moral principles
and yet we wake up every day
selling our souls to notions of capitalism.

It’s a dog eat dog world and
we’re drowned in the playback sound of
clashing titles, and haunted opinions.
Idealists and their tunnel vision,
socialists and their wide frame panoramas.

It’s optimistic how we think we live in
a functional utopia.
It’s but a social construct that we built
to hydraulically (re)press intuition and individuality.

This life is a two way street of thought and
counterclaim, but we march down one way
and leave behind the ones that try to break the flow.

We follow those disillusioned with the petty
grievances, caught in their own web of lies

and all that’s left is to wait for our death and voices to crystallize.




                                IN THE TIME AFTER


You can tell that this ground has seen wars.

When your feet press against the dark crevices
you can sense the songs of the soldiers that once bled.

When your eyes glance across the fields to the
Dahlias that grow around the fence, you can almost
see the trenches of darkness that once existed in the
same place.

When a distant crow flies above you
the world beneath your feet projects the shadow
of large fighter planes that once ripped
through the skies.

Listen to the walls that now border this place,
you can hear the wailing of the women
and hungry children that tried to escape.

Ghosts of wronged innocents, spirits of
lost patriots, and souls of entire nations
meander hopelessly on this land.

And if perhaps you happen to meet one someday,
be sure to tell them that they lost in vain-
because the dusty books of history have long forgotten
their holy names.



                                       REWIN(D)

The nights that we saw the wolves
give birth to their cubs,
the days we saw the flames make love
to the air of the earth.

The mystical mornings and walks
down fog saturated beach shores,
the cool evenings of watching our
shadows dance on ceilings overhead.

The afternoons we jumped heavy
compound walls and ran with the wind,
the dusks that we sat on the grass
and watched the sky’s iridescence in a time lapse.

The sunsets that turned into sunrises
the hours that turned into minutes
the wrinkles that turned into acne:
hit the rewind button and take me
back to the life of innocence and surprises.