Aug 10, 2017 Original Poetry
Reading a Script in Revere
©August 10th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Marshlands stretch towards the horizon,
Quiet under a darkening sky.
Gold-red-green-white lights blink
In faraway, receding Boston,
While behind me, the sea lies still
Beneath an orange moon, which rises lyrical
And lush, a pale grapefruit swollen with air,
While eight of us, earnest, intent,
Read through the lines of a play
That unfolds, surreal and nightmarish,
Full of mute early twentieth century terror
Disguised as domestic foreboding in 2015.
Meanwhile a resurgent reality washes
And swirls around our feet,
As the forces of destruction marshal their forces
Far away, but not far enough away, from us.
Still, we keep reading, and the evening coalesces.
We keep reading, because to not do so
In the face of what is coming,
To not think, or speak up, or act
In the face of that which approaches,
Will undo us all. And in reading,
We resist an approaching paralysis.
The sea moves slowly along the shore,
The marshlands send forth their mosquitoes
The director’s Papillon comes up,
Offering blank canine sweetness
For a few tail-wagging moments.
Crackers and cheese, and lemonade and wine
Chips and dips, and chocolate cake, and
After-script-reading conversation,
Remind me that in belonging to civilization,
We have to be able to excise that which wounds us all.
A paintbrush is more than a paintbrush.
A pen is more than a pen.
A picture is more than a picture.
Words are more than their meaning,
Yes – but if we do not see the true face
Of that suave Visitor from other times,
Whose honeyed voice awakens us
To false and incomplete notions of purity,
Who lulls our suspicions with talk of
A thousand years of a golden age,
Who talks of music and art and literature
But with a sub-textual menace,
We are doomed.
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Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Reading a Script, #Resistance
Aug 10, 2017 Friday Fictioneers, Original Short Story
Word Count: 100 words of text, exactly
Genre: Depressingly realistic fiction
I Don’t Want To …
©May 10th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I try to avoid that stone when I go visit that clearing. I don’t want to remember.
I don’t want to remember I was once that fourteen-year old, running through tall grass.
I don’t want to remember who was chasing after me.
I don’t want to remember my breath coming in quick bursts.
I don’t want to remember how he caught up with me.
I don’t want to remember how I fell, how I grabbed a stone.
I don’t want to remember where he lies.
The clearing calls to me, every year.
I don’t want to go, but I do.
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Trying to make up for months of silence on the Friday Fictioneers front. Many thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for hosting us, cheerfully, thoughtfully, and generously.
Aug 10, 2017 Friday Fictioneers, Original Short Story
PHOTO PROMPT© CEAyr
Word Count: 100 words of text, exactly
Genre: Geological-astronomical anthropomorphic rock-fiction
Never Water
©August 10th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Out of the soil, slowly emerging, out of the dirt, into the air, fault-lines converging, purging itself of all memory, all melodies of another time, another place, another birth, another face, I push aside what was, and raise my eyes to what is.
Once, I remember flying through space like a winged God, particles of me racing, spinning, then joining, then forming into larger and larger particles. I was fire and joy, born in the heart of a nebula.
Now, I am a mere thing, small, cooled, reduced.
Fire and earth, but never water.
I am athirst. I am athirst.
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Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, our Fairy Blog-Mother, who tirelessly and steadfastly hosts Friday Fictioneers for all of us. I was out for a long time in this space, but I’m back!