This poem expresses the concept of Sonder, which is defined as "the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness". The word Sonder was popularized in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a website and YouTube channel, created by John Koenig.
The website coins and defines neologisms for emotions that do not have a descriptive term. Please do check out the YouTube reading of my poem below as the atmosphere and otherworldiness of the state of Sonder comes across so much better in the reading.
Engulfed in Sonder
I wander, city streets paved with echoing weight,
striations of realities whittled in mind-states.
I wonder if sunbeams seem the same for the child
embraced by their mother,
in the blinking wide eyed confusion of pigeons
we all look like each other,
specs of….
gusts of….
dust on grey paved desert.
I meander Park Lane,
welts of rain flay my skin,
be-suited spectacled businessmen
cluck like hens on their phones,
make deals in hollows
between paving stones.
My somnolent eye
drinks the patter and splatter
of shoes through puddles,
drowning in hopes and struggle.
I dance down the high street,
ponderous buses pass
like journeying elephants,
lined with faces that express
the eloquence of the passage of time,
chipped from a quarry of thought,
dug from a field of sublime memories,
each suspended in a prism of reflection.
And all the while,
I realise the self is a prison we craft.
All the while, I feel the backdraft
of a thousand thinkers,
all drinking from hope’s chalice,
all drowning in struggles,
all winding the cogs,
all setting alarms,
all building ideas like charms,
repeated in the silence behind the eyes
I realise they’re all me and I’m them and we are we.
I wander on
changed, engulfed in sonder.
Attributions - All sources are creative commons.
Music: the track is called Ashes, by Radical Face from noisetrade.com
The picture used to create the art in this post is from pixabay.com, creative commons. Please follow link to credit. I used deep dream generator to modify the image and Adobe Pro to create the animated transitions. If you have enjoyed this poem you can check out my other work on my homepage @raj808.
I'd like to tag @agmoore here as she has told me she always enjoys my spoken word poetry.
Thanks for reading.
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