Aug 22, 2019 Uncategorized

Here’s the Thing
©August 22nd, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram

Here’s the thing about children
In detention centers, abandoned,
Sick, dying, separated
From all that is good:

One cannot make poetry from it.
One cannot make art from it.
One cannot make anything from it.
For, it is unimaginable.

It is an offense against humanity.
It makes all other emotion hollow.
It makes it hard to live
A life that holds meaning.

All joys and sadnesses become muted
When set against it.
And yet, we struggle on,
Stupid, stupefied, stunned by it all,
Still laugh, still eat and drink,
Still find pleasure in daily things.

For, if only sorrow and horror define us,
What’s left?
So, we make music and art, and we sing,
Even when our voices crack,
And other cracks form within.
Dual consciousness is the new burden
All of us carry, as we try and carve out
A different vision for all people,
Perhaps, a different life.
And work in what ways we can
To tilt the balance a little in favor of humanity.

And if the horror we see doesn’t kill us,
The work we do might just save us all.
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Aug 22, 2019 Uncategorized

A Response to a Play I Disliked
©August 22nd, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram

If fiction within fiction within fiction
Stretches its arms towards Truth,
And finds that *that* is a fiction,
What’s left?

Chains, maybe?
Paper chains, waiting to be ripped.
A trudge through weary tropes,
Paper flames and cartoon parents,
An emotion too tired to be sadness,
A history too tenuous to grasp.

And I struggle to reach empathy
Even I struggle against it,
As an outside force pushes me
Violently and laughingly towards it.

I stand still, and dig my heels in,
Examine the landscape,
Swallow my ire,
And turn around.

Open the gates of ivory,
I wish to pass back out through them,
For I seek the gates of horn.
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