Apr 17, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Breath
Breathe!
© April 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Inspire me!
My vision fails, and
My limbs are weak.
And all I hear is
My dog barking.
I am hungry. I care
Only for food, and its
Atavistic satisfaction.
I wish to know how
To shape this day,
Stretch its sunshine
Into a perfectly folded
Sandwich, and eat it.
Respire deeply.
Meditate on your
Vision of a world
Without famine.
Go out, and gaze upon
The shy daffodils,
The narcissus and the
Hyacinth, now making bold
With the Spring-light,
And flaunting their young
Beauty in the amorous breeze.
Aspire to your other self –
Lying among the beaches of
The Milky Way, starry-eyed
You reach lazily for a cluster of
Constellations to nibble – ah
Just out of your reach!
Think not of unfinished work
(It will happen.)
Think not of goals you’ve
Misplaced or forgotten.
(Were they important?)
Think not of age creeping
Slyly up on you,
Stretching your cheeks,
Softening your chin,
Pulling at your eyelids.
Time is jealous of youth.
(Who cares?)
Do you see your other self?
See? She smiles, stretches
Her galactic hand to you.
(Go on, grasp it!)
Suspire deeply:
When you are flung back onto
This sun-flecked present,
While a chickadee and a finch
Take turns at the bird-feeder,
Grateful for food; suspire, and
Remember your hunger
Sigh at your vast satisfaction
When you taste bread.
When the tedious days
Pull at your limbs, as the sun
Moves drunkenly through
The blue-saturated sky,
Go upstairs, leg dragging after leg,
Fall on the bed in slow motion,
Snooze and dream a happy dream
Of rabbits in Spring.
Conspire with me now:
How do we arrest this day,
Weaving a gossamer net
Of sunshine and flowers
And bird-song and slow hours,
Pull her to shore,
And still live long?
Harness the Sun, tempt his horses
With apples and grass,
Then recline and dream away
This lovely day.
Alas, it transpires that I have
Tedious tasks, and so do you.
We cannot linger, we must go.
The birds can dream, and so too
The dog, who gazes out full of
Joy this beautiful Sunday.
And before I expire from the
Loveliness and the quietude,
I turn at the knock on
My door. The day beckons.
Go outside! Walk the dog!
Spirit, mine,
Be gentle. Breathe quietly.
Let this day be long.
Let me walk in peace
Among the tall trees.
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Tags: #Breath, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #SpringtimeFantasy, #The Daily Prompt, #TheDailyPost
Apr 17, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Disaster
No Words for This
©April 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
When the train pulled
Black and hateful and loud –
Loud as all of India –
Into that teeming station,
With thousands pushing,
Pummeling, yelling, crowding,
Cursing, shouting, shoving,
Grunting, hitting, rushing,
Punching, running, stumbling
Into that still moving train,
As it pulled into the platform,
And you slipped and fell,
And your leg was trapped
Between the train and the
Unrelenting platform, between
Hateful concrete, steel and stone,
You couldn’t cry out –
The pain was too large
For sound, too sudden
For speech, too cruel
For expression.
When you lay bleeding on the platform –
You leg hanging by a thread,
You were far from home,
And someone, a kind soul,
Took sense from your panting voice
Your fading consciousness,
And called home, four hours away,
To tell your wife, –
It was a cataclysm.
Railway porters, quick as fire,
Bore you away on a stretcher,
Tenderly like a mother with new babe,
Impelled by love and distress,
To the nearby hospital
And saved your life.
And when the news of all this
Came floating on the tide to me,
I lost my footing, slipped to the floor.
A little empty space
Opened up inside my stomach,
As if a universe had been carved away
And only dark matter remained.
And we thought you might die,
But you didn’t.
Laughing with deep sadness,
Making terrible puns,
Jokes in the worst taste,
You recovered, and ate well.
And we sighed, and prepared
To help you face a life
With one leg.
And my mother nurtured you
And kept you close, and
Tended to you, setting aside sadness –
Love in her every move.
And you lived on
For fifteen more years,
Even as cancer grew in you
From blood transfusions
Gone hideously awry.
It’s not fair! I yelled to the skies,
Not fair!
You died after cruel pain
Crucified your body,
And my mother faced
Life alone, mute and stoic,
Aching and struck silent
By unending sorrow.
There are no words
For this.
Disaster?
I spit in its face.
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Tags: #Disaster, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #RailwayAccident, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt
Apr 17, 2016 Free Verse, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Une Vie En Musique
©April 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Susurrando, susurrante,
A voice from another world
Speaks to me in honey-tones
Leaning seductively, caresses
My dream-state, and says:
Conduct yourself well
And tune to the bourdon-hum of life
Play your life-song rubato,
Steal from Time:
Steal all that you can steal
From the hours that crawl by
Seducing you with sweets.
Be not a slave to punctuality*,
And strangling parameters of
Suburban ennui.
Shift tempo now, do it suddenly
– make your life a rondeau.
Play it subito –
Hark back to your
Days of happy childhood,
Circle back to the present
Return to a later unhappy past,
Keep circling to the recent
Present, to the near-future.
Here’s a shadowed corner,
You can linger here, for now.
Sing of saudade, feel the
Longing sweep over you.
Are you done, now?
Good! Go live allegretto
Avoid the lure of tenebroso
For too long; just a touch
Makes one lacrimoso, – Enough!
That’s one tear too many.
Keep them for another day.
As you go through the hours,
Accelerando, then decelerando.
Why be predictable?
Consistency is the demon
That will kill.
Keep circling and return
Ad libitum to the start of it all.
I listen to the voice,
And heed its message.
Smiling, I lean into the darkness,
And whisper back:
Make my life a fermata.
And now, come, Messenger,
Come to me now, and
Piano, pianissimo,
Take me away!
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Note: I used The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (online) to come up with the musical terms in my poem (although I knew most of them, already).
* Reference to Oscar Wilde’s quip (which I must have certainly internalized as a young pre-teen): “Punctuality is the thief of Time.”
Here’s the prompt for Day 17 from NaPoWriMo:
And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I challenge you to find, either on your shelves or online, a specialized dictionary. This could be, for example, a dictionary of nautical terms, or woodworking terms, or geology terms. Anything, really, so long as it’s not a standard dictionary! Now write a poem that incorporates at least ten words from your specialized source. Happy writing!