Apr 12, 2017 Bop, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Pleasure Can Be Worn
©April 12th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Outside, the sun is proud and strident.
The air hammers blacksmith-blows
Onto exposed skin. A heavy weight
Settles in the cavity in my chest.
Birds celebrate, loud and defiant
Against a too-early summer; why not I?
Daffodil yellow is my scarf; cheerfulness can be worn.
Sleep is a melody, but my voice cracks like glass
Every day, a gathering of strength
Slow and steady, a fight against lethargy
One succeeds from habit; one smiles, it’s real.
But too much reality radiates jagged lines
From a broken point, and through the break,
Recycled sunshine pours down, awakening
Daffodils in a supermarket; I gaze at them.
Daffodil yellow is my scarf; cheerfulness can be worn.
Your scarf and you belong with these daffodils,
She says to me, her silvery hair and cheerfulness
Making the air ripple, while I gaze at pots of flowers.
The weight, now with attached balloons, floats sunwards.
Too much reality, too many jagged lines, melt
Into bright light, birdsong, simple pleasure in colour.
Daffodil yellow is my scarf; cheerfulness can be worn.
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This is in response to the prompt for Day 11 of NaPoWriMo 2017.
Tags: #Bop Poetry, #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Apr 10, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Lost Fish – A Portrait
©April 10th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The air parts when she moves
Heavy and awkward in her bones,
Graceful, too, like a fish or seal,
Beautiful in her element.
Her eyes hold loss and release it,
As a thirsty child might cup
Her hands at a stranger’s water-pump,
Drinking, letting flow, letting fall,
Evaporating, noting what is being lost.
There is humour there, too
And clarity, and wit.
Eyes that see, and know.
Eyes that break down
The composition of all the loss
That flows, evaporates.
Eyes that are not deceived.
There is love of beauty,
Of music, of art,
But the head interferes,
Muscling in, shoving
All of that to one side,
Coolly calculating loss.
Deep within, loss
Spreads like a pool
At the bottom of a waterfall
On the side of a remote mountain
And holds a single fish
Flashing its fin in the sun
Gulping air, her fish.
And below it, glinting,
A knife.
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This is my response to Day 10 of NaPoWriMo 2017. The prompt was to write a portrait of someone important.
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Portrait
Apr 9, 2017 Balassi Stanza, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Ride the Wave
©April 9th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The past does not live here
The future interferes
This place is for the present
Free yourself as you fall
The sea is for us all
Your splash is phosphorescent.
Count every glowing wave
And ride it to your grave
You are not convalescent.
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NOTE: I used the Balassi Stanza for my nine-line poem, and it goes thus:
Rhyme scheme: a. a. d. b. b. d. c..c. d
Syllable count: 6. 6. 7. 6. 6. 7. 6. 6. 7.
Our NaPoWriMo Day 9 prompt was this:
Because today is the ninth day of NaPoWriMo, I’d like to challenge you to write a nine-line poem. Although the fourteen-line sonnet is often considered the “baseline” form of verse in English, Sir Edmund Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene using a nine-line form of his own devising, and poetry in other languages (French, most particularly) has always taken advantage of nine-line forms. You can find information of various ways of organizing rhyme schemes, meters, etcetera for nine-line works here. And of course, you can always eschew such conventions entirely, and opt to be a free-verse nine-line poet.
Tags: #AdvicePoem, #NaPoWriMo 2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Apr 8, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Resurgence
©April 8th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Look! It’s raining all around!
See the water rushing down
Down the streets, and in the town
Down the gutters, sodden grounds!
Down into the river, flowing.
Water, swelling, rising, growing.
Swollen rain, surprising, throwing
Caution to the winds a-blowing.
Buds appear on lilac trees.
Buds appear with sudden ease,
Bursting from their hidden seeds,
Bursting with a need to be.
Bursting with purple-to-see
Bursting with abandoned glee
Bursting amidst sticks and weeds,
Unrelenting in their speed.
Spring comes to us like a child
Vulnerable, naked, wild,
Begging to be rocked, beguiled
With songs of love, delighted smiles.
Catch that wildness, trap that hue
Give your life that which is due
Make it springtime, make it through.
Make yourself a child, anew!
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Today’s Day 8 NaPoWriMo 2017 prompt reads:
…I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that relies on repetition. It can be repetition of a phrase, or just a word. Need a couple of examples? Try “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe, or Joy Harjo’s “She Had Some Horses”. Poe’s poem creates a relentless, clanging effect through the repetition of the word “bells,” while Harjo’s repeated use of the phrase “she had some horses” and variations thereof gives her poem poem its incantatory effect, while also deepening its central philosophical conceit of what things are the same and what things are different.
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Poemwithrepetition, #Spring
Apr 7, 2017 Free Verse, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Sweet-Folk
©April 7th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
A rickshaw. Daughter and I.
Late afternoon in Pune.
Bags with boxes of sweets
Rich, swooning mango squares
Kaju katli triangles, pistachio rolls,
Laddus, and carrot-halvas, and pedhas.
Perched like tottering towers
Of Pisa in the rickshaw’s back-space.
Diesel-petrol exhaust fumes
Mingle with agarbatti swirling from
The rickshaw-wallah‘s incense-stand
Snaking through the jasmine-malas
Which my daughter and I hold
Like fragrant shields before our noses.
Children sell them on the street
At light-intersections here;
Little boys and girls darting
Like minnows among the
Slowly-flowing, sometimes-paused
Traffic, their faces appearing
At our rickshaw, and their
hands out-thrust, jasmine-laden,
Saying, “Want flowers?”
Schoolgirls and schoolboys, walking
Like shoals of bright fish
In colorful uniforms, heading home
From afternoon-school, neat and unfazed,
Laden with books on their backs,
Chatter like magpies, their plumage
Shining in the early-evening sun.
We reach home, pay the rickshaw,
Go upstairs, narrate our adventures
To mother, aunt, grandmother.
I say, “Oh, and I bought all these
Sweets for you, and for others.”
I turn to look for them.
They’re not there!
We forgot them!
Mortified, upset, I sit down,
Shrug on a philosophical attitude,
Like a sanyasi‘s mantle,
Try on a casual voice, and
Say, “Well, whoever finds them
Is welcome to them.
Let someone else enjoy it!”
My daughter consoles me;
She knows I hate losing things.
My mother, wisely, refrains
From telling me I should
Have been more careful.
I hope, hope, hope …
Then, the doorbell rings.
Opening the door, I see a gift:
A man standing there with our bags –
Our rickshaw-driver!
“I drove all the way home,
Then saw this, and drove back,”
He explains, handing them over.
Simple goodness shines
In his sweat-beaded face.
Our joy is manifold:
We thank him profusely.
I want to hug him,
But knowing it would
Embarrass him, I say,
“Stay, and have a cup of tea!”
He declines, but is grateful
When we hand him a cup of water.
As he leaves, I press
A box of pedhas into his hands.
“No, no,” he protests. We insist.
He is pleased. Accepts.
That night, visions are bright,
Swirling like fragrant jasmine
And heady agarbatti fumes.
The taste of milk-pedhas
And the sweetness of good-folk
Linger in dream-memory.
I savour it for a long time.
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This is my submission for Day 7 of NaPoWriMo 2017. The idea was to write a poem about something fortuitous, or a fortuitous poem, arising from linking events or objects.
I chose to write the former, about an actual fortuitous occurrence.
Tags: #Fortuitousness, #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Serendipity, #Sweets in a rickshaw in India
Apr 6, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Three – A Tableau
©April5th/6th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Child on his side, heaving,
Dust, and chaos, an acrid chemical.
Within, all goes silent, but
Pain roars through him like
An express train.
Like a fish on the sand,
His body heaves, he tries to speak
Struggles to breathe,
Bewildered by the attack.
His lungs fill with foam,
Like a sea surging inward.
Ami, Abi! Ami, Abi!
Man races through suffocating air
Searching for his wife, his children,
And stumbles upon their bodies,
Arms flung out, eyes gazing skyward,
Still as birds in a painting.
Time loses its hold,
People blur into nightmare shapes,
Someone puts an arm around him,
He wails aloud, an animal sound.
He sees the boy on his side,
Gasping on the sand, a stranded fish.
The man stumbles over to him, strokes his hair,
“Breathe, child, breathe, I’m here.
Hush, all will be well. Don’t die.”
The boy’s eyes
Fill his vision, like a planet
Coming closer. Here is horror,
Here is comfort.
Far away, you click through your FB feed
Reading, writing, and finding
News, outrage, horror.
Hooked on fear, you shake if off,
Click on a video of cats taking a bath,
A momentary respite, a smile,
Like a hand parting dense rain-clouds,
And you feel better.
How nice! You can laugh, or weep,
– what a privilege!
Then you go cold.
You see an image –
A child on his side, gasping for breath.
A hand grips your viscera,
And you struggle against grief,
You feel a net closing
Around you.
Your own child is safe,
You remind yourself, but
The net traps you,
As you struggle to
Take in air.
Why is it raining indoors?
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This is my poem for Day 6 of NaPoWriMo2017. The prompt was to write a poem about one thing, using different perspectives.
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #SyrianChemicalAttack, #ThreeViews
Apr 5, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Rift Valley Within the Lute
©April 5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Red-headed house finches at bird-feeder,
Spring stirring in their breasts.
Why do you fight over our land?
Hum of electricity buzzes,
Ticking clock punctuates regrets.
We cannot breathe! Help us!
Golden light spills over the table
Crowded with comfort, a cup of lemon tea.
We’re dying, our children, our children!
People driving their cars homeward,
Breaking rules, caught by mobile screens.
We curse you and yours
May your hell never cease.
What shall we have for supper?
May your guilt dog you
Till the day you die.
Chinese food for a change?
So tired of cooking!
May every good deed you do
Vanish into the void.
Who is this bag of emptiness,
Unable to rise and work?
May you weep tears of acid
May you never find peace.
Brain buzzes like a swarm of bees –
So tired of everything …
May your world drain of colour, like ours
May your lives drain into desert sands.
Look! A crocus! Spring’s here!
The air is ripe with rain to come.
Why did you let our children die?
Startled by sound, the birds fly away,
And gray light saturates all.
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Tags: #ChemicalAttackinSyria, #InternationalStruggle, #NaPoWriMo2017, #SpringinAmerica, #WarontheInnocents
Apr 5, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Lilacs©Vijaya Sundaram, 2016
Growing Old With Lilacs
©April 5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Lilac-trees at the base of our steps –
Purple and white ghosts in May.
Swooning air, gladdened eyes, a
Bunched and tight need to hold on –
Bloom with them.
As quietly as they bloom,
They fade, browning into death.
Every year, without fail,
The lilacs make for a new
Falling-in-love, and out.
Heart beats just a little faster,
Wild need to kiss everything
In sight overwhelms skin.
Shake it off, but hold the feeling
Close within, like a secret romance.
Every year, the relentless onset
Of summer months, the gentle slide
Into autumn, fading all too quickly
Into grim winter, prickly and cold.
One grows older, faster.
So, eternal sunshine lures me
To eternal youth, but perhaps,
That might bore in time.
Besides, if I leave for sunny climes,
I shall miss my lilacs.
Agelessness loses romance.
For without fierce love
And fierce loss, all is
Placid, and placidity
Equals death.
I think I’ll stay and grow old
With my lilacs, and hold their
Fragrance close to my dreaming
Aging self.
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Tags: #Lilacsinmygarden, #NaPoWriMo2017, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram
Apr 4, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Plateau and Quietude
©April 4th/5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
A plateau of bald rock
At the very top of Wright’s Tower
Lies back like a woman
Baring her midriff to the sky
On a quiet beach.
She breathes quietly.
The trees encircling her
Whisper sweet nothings,
Turning light into leaves.
A hawk wheels patiently
Far above in the sun-beaten
Rain-saturated sky of Spring.
We cross the highway,
My dog and I, two wanderers
Taking a known path,
Seeking the unknown.
We reach the woods.
Green-gold slippery shadows,
Daffodil-yellow sunlit paths,
A burst of quietude –
These are ours today.
I walk, hoping for sudden
Red flash of fox, or
Grey-brown dart of coyote,
Holly runs forward and back
Looping around me, hoping for pursuit.
An impudent squirrel, semaphoring insults,
Or rude rabbit, flashing its behind
As it taunts her, will do nicely.
She slices through the green wood-light
As it parts neatly
In her canine wake.
We see nothing that we seek.
Just a pair of loud, proud geese,
Walking confidently towards the pond,
Which, rain-swollen and ready for turtles
Makes room for them,
The water trembling in the light
Like a vision in a sweet dream,
From which I would never want
To emerge.
Holly is cautious;
Geese are loud, belligerent
Hers is an exuberant nature,
But geese worry her;
Of course, she’d never admit this.
She looks elsewhere, casual
As a girl walking down a city-street
Hoping to not be noticed.
The geese pay no heed,
As they slide into the water
Honking like mad rickshaw-horns.
We leave them behind,
Rippling the water into green-gold silk.
Holly lopes up the slopes,
I follow, sometimes stumbling.
The Tower looms in the distance.
The gravel path gives way
To dark earth, squelchy mud,
Soft pine needles, leaves.
A sudden movement scatters them,
And we see young, striped snakes
Skittering away into the undergrowth,
Vanishing at our approach.
Tenderness floods me.
I am grateful for this glimpse.
We climb up the hill,
Reach the tower, sit on a rock,
Watch the traffic move far below
On the improbable highway:
Two shimmering metallic snakes
Flowing in two different directions.
I shudder at them.
My dog pays no heed.
She is of the Moment,
And the Moment is Eternal.
The silence of mid-day is broken
A single bird-song questions the air,
But there is no reply.
I try and forget the things
I always remember:
Rising seas, melting glaciers
Punishing heat, dying animals,
Plastic-swollen seabirds,
Parched snakes, ailing bees.
How could all that be
On a day such as this?
I push that reality away
And seek these woods,
Knowing that illusions exist,
Contradictions collide.
I grieve the loss of all
That I’ve yet to see,
And the world is vast.
But for now, my dog and I
Reach our plateau that,
Lies like a woman
Baring her midriff to the sky,
And I lie on my back
Right there, and watch the skies
Wheeling around me, the rock
Sunning herself, solid and quiet,
The trees whispering to us,
And my dog panting
Quietly by my side.
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Today’s NaPoWriMo Day 5 prompt was to “write a poem that is based in the natural world: it could be about a particular plant, animal, or a particular landscape. But it should be about a slice of the natural world that you have personally experienced and optimally, one that you have experienced often. ”
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #walkinthewoodswithdog
Apr 3, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Himself in the Mirror
©April 3rd/4th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Happy to be you today?
He says to her,
The question surprising
Both of them.
Oh yes, so happy!
It’s sunny out, and
The days flow like silk,
Don’t they?
Coffee with me sometime?
He asks, tentative,
Attracted, shy.
They stand on the grass
Little, friendly ants crawl over
Her sneakers, and she lets them be.
A bee buzzes near his head,
And he shakes it.
She inclines hers
Just a fraction, smiling vaguely,
Her acknowledgement of his
Invitation, his attraction
Fractured by competing
Time-tables, now and forever.
She’s on another track,
The train approaches,
And she has to choose
To board it.
He doesn’t see it,
He doesn’t hear it,
All he sees is his reflection
In her eyes.
He is in love.
It isn’t that she’s unhappy
It isn’t envy of him, either.
It’s shifting views
Opacity and transparency,
Her mind saying one thing,
The world seeing another.
Delicate and elfin,
She stands, hand shading
Eyes. smiling vaguely
Up at him, his face so eager.
I’ll be seeing you,
She says, and his face falls.
She pities him, but she
Is not his keeper.
Okay, he mumbles, and
Walks away, diminishing,
Into the horizon,
His return a question mark.
She goes to her house,
Her heart beats loudly.
She’s made up her mind.
This is no time to worry.
He, or her parents,
Or her friends will,
But she won’t.
She has chosen.
She opens the door to the bathroom,
Stands before the mirror,
Gazes at her reflection,
Sees what she will become,
And smiles at himself in the mirror.
Hello, you! he says.
He boards the train.
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This is my poem for Day 4 of NaPoWriMo.
This was the prompt:
One of the most popular British works of classical music is Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The “enigma” of the title is widely believed to be a hidden melody that is not actually played, but which is tucked somehow into the composition through counterpoint. Today I’d like you to take some inspiration from Elgar and write a poem with a secret – in other words, a poem with a word or idea or line that it isn’t expressing directly. The poem should function as a sort of riddle, but not necessarily a riddle of the “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” variety. You could choose a word, for example, “yellow,” and make everything in the poem something yellow, but never actually allude to their color. Or perhaps you could closely describe a famous physical location or person without ever mentioning what or who it actually is.
Tags: #Enigmatic poem, #LGBTQ, #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Transgendering