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
Feb 28, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Keep Walking
©February 28th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Legs keep moving, in and out,
On and on, feet touching pavement,
Feet in air, feet touching down.
Resist cessation.
Birds sing in confused pleasure
Trees wear catkins like gloves,
Soft-fingered and fuzzy,
And bulbs poke out
Look around in anticipation,
Unsure of life, compelled to grow.
The sun rides hard,
His horses neigh loudly,
And buck and trample clouds
As they propel themselves
Chaotically, confusedly, hotly
Towards yawning darkness,
Resist! I call out to them.
Keep walking, keep walking.
Sing as you walk, loudly, loudly
Let the darkness know you approach.
Let it cower when you arrive.
Sing into its yawn,
Pour loud joy into its chasm,
Until it dissolves, stupefied,
Chastened, ephemeral.
Resist!
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Tags: #Approachingearlyspringinwinter, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #resist
Feb 27, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Refusal
©February 27th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
My dog sings to me with her eyes
Large, dark, almond-eyes
Full of unexpressed emotion,
She sings her deepest soul to me.
I look back into those endless depths
And think, “What galaxies,
What worlds, what unknown dreams
Fill that mind, cause her nose
To follow its own path, cause her
Eyes to follow my every move?”
I see her gaze dwell on me,
The dishes being done, I swivel
And there she is, gaze fixed on me,
Full of mute adoration, or is it
Mute pleading for meaning?
I look back at her.
Unblinking, she stares,
Then, turning to her left,
Points to something,
Her nose message-keen.
I look, but I don’t need to.
“No,” I say, “No, you can’t.”
Tail drooping, she stares,
Then, jumping up, she paws
And claws at the counter,
Making a little rww-rwwawr sound.
I almost succumb, but resist.
Stifling laughter, I say,
“You persist, and I feel your pain.
But again I say to you, Holly,
‘No, we have no bananas.
We have no bananas today.'”
She is undeterred, adamantine.
Jumping up, she paws at me,
Asking in infra-red or ultra-violet
Canine speech, demanding, really.
So, fond and foolish,
I find one last banana, unzip it,
And feed my ravening beast.
Banana-Hound wins this round.
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P.S. It’s true, all of it. My dog is a banana-hound!
Tags: #Dog, #NoWeHaveNoBananas!, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Feb 26, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Orpheus (and I)
©February 26th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every day, the idea of oblivion
Entices, lures, coaxes me ever closer.
I resist, then press on towards it.
And I resist again.
There is a river whose name
I forget, remembering pain, and forget.
Once, I crossed over, and returned
How, I know not. Yet, it calls.
Now, I play my music, but it’s
The ghost of someone who plays:
The ghost of a beloved memory
Who lets her fingers
Stray dreamily over the lyre.
The stones speak.
The woods stir.
Animals gather round.
They come closer and closer.
I do not greet them.
They sit in silence around me.
They bring some solace.
Sunlight plays over my head
Like the fingers of my beloved
I see strings stretched across it.
I play it, and rain falls, flowing
Over my cheeks, like the river
Of forgetting, bleak, cold.
See over there?
Somewhere beyond those hills,
Women beckon, red-eyed, long-nailed,
Wild-haired, naked, wine-stained,
And manic, ready to wreck my life.
They fill me with terror,
Yet, I’m strangely drawn to them
As if an error of blood, of rage
Connects me to them, an error of fate.
Someone long ago, from the future
Said to me, “Avoid them.”
I forget who it was,
A poet, I think.
She treasured my music.
She wept over my lost love.
She wrote about my sorrow.
And she said, “Stay here.
These woods, these animals
Will love you and protect you.
Play your music for them.”
I do not listen to her words.
She was born of my mind, a mere
Figment, a fragment of a future
That didn’t exist, because it hadn’t
Come into being, because I
Didn’t sing of it, because I
Couldn’t picture it, because I
Abhorred the future, because i
Loathed the present, because I
Wanted to live and die in the past.
I leave that place, weeping
For my lost love.
The trees weep with me, and animals
Follow, forlorn, seeking comfort
From one who is bereft of it.
The hills call.
Maenads beckon.
I am come to meet
A fate I cannot fathom.
A seek an end to this.
I seek my beloved.
I hear her call, even
As I am torn.
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Tags: #GreekMythology, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Orpheus
Feb 24, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
At the Heart
©February 24th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
It was always a spiral
An endless spiral, with an endless
Swirling centre plunging down
All the way, into the heart of everything,
And rising endlessly up, like a mad demon
Into the skies, ready to uproot.
Wisdom and knowledge, that is.
Knowing and forgetting,
Chaos and dust, and shining motes
Light-infused, light-saturated,
Water-suffused, water-logged –
The spiral lifts everything,
Everything that is rooted,
Thinking itself secure and firm,
And tosses it around like a rag doll
Smashing dreams, and reconstructing
Everything in a new reality.
Everything IS a new reality
My life is filled with forgetting,
Getting, losing, forgetting
Letting it all pass through me –
I’m a sieve, collecting grit and pebbles
And stones and dirt, rocks and houses.
And while the funnel funnels me up
And whirls me in its mad dance,
All that stone, and grit, and pebbles,
That dirt, those rocks and houses,
Lifted out of place, I catch briefly,
A glimpse of the calm, still place,
Filled with light, and for a moment,
I sit there, suspended, cross-legged,
Rising and falling, eyes closed,
Oblivious.
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Feb 23, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Cold Fire, Warm Fire
©February 23rd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Fires which cast a cold, impersonal light
Are fires that do not warm.
I want to be one who casts a flickering glow
And warms you to your very core.
And I shall try not to burn out too soon.
But when I do, remember this:
I vanished in smoke, and climbed to meet the Sun.
And this, here, mattered not one whit.
And yet, this, here, matters forever, endures
In contradiction is truth born.
So, thank you for what you’ve been, and are to me
Though the wind buffets, I’ll hold on.
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Tags: #BeingMortal, #ColdFireWarmFire, #Immortality, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Feb 22, 2017 Free Verse
Star
©February 22nd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
You fling light out of yourself,
And you fling out darkness
People see what they see.
Those with prisms will see
Colors and lines from emitted light.
Those with spectroscopes will see
All those hidden dark lines.
Your light-lines and dark-lines
Transmitting, absorbing,
Singing with harmonics.
Singing with harmonics.
While you swirl in chaos
And dance in order, uncaring.
And out of darkness, planets
Form around you, lonely,
Trapped in orbit.
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Tags: #lightabsorptionandtransmission, #Metaphorical poem, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #starspectrum
Feb 22, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Broken, Mend
©February 22nd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I love you, and you, and you.
I love them, and them, and them.
But not those who crush love.
Pity them, and fear them
For what their fear
Has visited upon them.
Unwilling to look in the mirror,
The empty ones redirect their gaze
Back at others, innocents all,
Who, moving through their lives
Breathe truth and love,
In anxious toil and hope –
And, redirecting, the empty ones
Try and destroy, over and over.
Jealous and fearful their rage
It must be stamped out.
And how, how?
I wish love upon them.
I wish pity upon them.
I wish sorrow upon them.
I wish an uprush of self-terror so great
It will tear through their defenses –
Where they cower and hide
And scroll through lies –
And lay bare their empty space,
Where the ground is barren,
Where the light is borrowed.
Where the voices are broken,
Where their minds are blind.
And as they rush about to tend
To their self-wounds, in the fabric
Of the walls so lacking in love,
They will collapse, and wail,
And the skies will drown them
With rain and quench
Their empty places.
Let us go in, and
Plant some seeds.
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Feb 8, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Rage
©February 8th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Rage, rage, rage
But do not lose your love
Even as the avalanche gains strength.
Rage, rage, rage
But do not give up hope
As it speeds and slopes downwards.
Rage, rage, rage
But wage Art against death
Freeze the minions of hate and hell!
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Feb 7, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Here and Gone
©February 7th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Snow came down like sleep.
And I watched flakes fly by me
As I drove down the street.
Like the vanishing of the world
As it dissolves into dream-dust,
The snow melted into itself
And remained, still.
I wondered at it.
How can something vanish
And still remain?
I wondered at it.
How can something vanish
And still remain?
When I die, I should like
To go like snow.
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Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Snowandvanishinganddeath