Oct 27, 2018 Original Poetry
Tree of Life
(Addressed to Robert Bowers)
©October 27th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Your name means the shade,
The sheltering arbor.
But you broke into the
Tree of Life, and snapped branches,
Trampling on prayer and holiness.
The dead will haunt you.
And you will die, broken, your
Voice gone, choking on grief,
As the roots of the Tree of Life
Will clutch at your feet
And draw them in,
Deeper into the earth,
And your life-force
Will be sucked into it.
You, who kill,
You will meet the dead,
And they will forgive you,
And love you, and haunt you,
Till you scream for mercy.
And they will smother you
With all the love you took
Away from them, all the love
They still had in the world,
All the love that broke loose
When you shot them, as they prayed.
And you and your kind
Will choke on their sentence of love
That never got to be completed,
Because …
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Oct 27, 2018 Original Poetry
Longing
©October 27th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
And the rain drips like a reminder:
Everything gets washed clean.
Everything gets eroded.
Everything gets reshaped.
Everything begins anew.
In the meantime, the cold
Shrivels up leaves.
My dog lies still, contemplating
Nothing, knowing our unease,
Providing her own kind of solace,
A true bodhisattva.
We give each other solace,
She and I.
I remember when I was young,
I remember love and loss,
Remember upspringing hope,
But now, today, in this unrelenting rain,
Memory is useless, and longing
Is for the young.
I type words on a screen,
And feel a sudden
Flash of forward-vision
Looking back at myself,
Now, longing for something.
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Oct 27, 2018 Original Poetry
Null and Void
©October 27th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Death waits, encased in human flesh
Churning with rage and hate
Unwilling, but trapped by its host.
And when the bullets fly,
All the prayers in the world
Float upwards, like confetti being
Sucked back into its box.
Death waits, unwilling, but trapped
In the fleshpots of hatred,
And can never leave,
Except through a gun.
All those prayers scatter,
Dissipate, devotion shattered
By a terrorist who listened
To the source of our terror,
Blathering nonsense on
A world-wide stage, despised by all,
Yet allowed to sit in his sacred post,
Inspiring zealots and haters,
And acknowledging nothing.
From all that emptiness, emerges
A wind that lifts everyone
In its path into its vortex,
And slams them down,
Then, retreats, mumbling, speaking
About the Second Amendment,
Taking refuge behind empty words,
And shouting, “Fake News!”
And when everyone looks
(“Look! A Ferrari!”), it dismantles
Yet another monument, or topples
Yet another pillar of the nation’s
Eroding rights.
This is not a President,
It is a gaping chasm,
A Void that has no bottom.
And all its legions are
Emerging, laughing, excited.
Do we allow them to
Swallow us whole?
Do we fight back the hordes,
Do we cower behind platitudes?
Do we want to even listen
To their shrill cries?
Will we let doubt rise up around us,
And will we drown,
Even as we speak
About liberty and justice
For all?
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