Apr 18, 2016 Free Verse, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry, Ramblings and Musings

The Sounds and Words of Home
©April 18th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Shuklam Bharataram Vishnum
Shashi Varnam Chaturbhujam
Prasanna Vadanam Dhyayet
Sarva Vighna Upashaanthaye

The words and the voice pull aside
Heavy curtains of sleep
And I stir to the warmth
Of M.S.’s voice
On a Sunday morning.

Clatter of stainless steel
Pathirams in kitchen-time; the
Bright glow of my mother’s
Pure voice singing along with
The ancient vedic chanting of the
One Thousand Names of Vishnu;
The sounds of filter coffee
And dosai being made
Plop, hiss, crackle, slap, turn
Sizzle of oil, or ghee.

Seated before the gods,
My father prays, bare-armed,
Clad in a white veshti, with
Sacred thread across one shoulder.
Sandalwood pasted daubed on
Upper arms and forehead, he
Chants mysterious prayers
(I never ask what they are).
Incense and camphor twine
Lovingly aroumnd the sudden
Cling-ting-gling-gling of a
Brass, hand-held bell,
Whose tongue is loud
And punctures the morning air.

Out, beyond the compound wall around
Our house, the low, grumbling moos
Of cows and buffalo in the sheds
Run by displaced milkmen
Plumb-spang in the midst of city-bustle
Make a droning background
For a new day in Tamil country.

And traffic stirs sluggishly awake,
Buses and cars and bullock-carts
And rickshaws, and the ding-ding of
Bicycle bells, as they plough and plunge
Through a chaotic morning.
Sunday it might be, but the city
Never stops, the work grinds on.

Edho madhiri aiduthu
(It’s become like … something!)
My mother would say
Sorrowing over some dish that
Came out not to her satisfaction.

Oru chottu uppu venum
(Needs just a jot of salt)
My grandfather would say, and
She’d agree, ever the
Connoisseurs, the artists
Of food in all its forms.

Kacha-muchanu vekka kudadu
(Don’t put it higgledy-piggledy!)
She’d admonish someone
If a straightening-up wasn’t straight  –
She’d do it herself,
Ever the perfectionist.

Surusuruppaga valaiya va!
She’d say, exasperated,
When we lounged around,
In teenage sluggitude.
Be brisk, be surusuruppu!

Porum-porumna aidithu!
She’d sigh, when the work
Got out of hand, when her patience waned:
Things have become enough-enough for me,
And we chuckled, heartlessly.
(Sympathy came much later!)

Konam-Manama irruku
She’d observe about the
Parting I’d make in my hair,
Or about the lines around
Her mouth and chin, later.
It’s all crooked-wook-ed.

Meanwhile, my father, irrepressible
And irresponsible, punned happily
In three languages to our delight.
And all of us, helpless with laughter,
Forgave him his lapses.

Alas! I wish I could remember
What he said, how he said it.
I remember his voice, his smile,
His Jovian presence, his courage
In the face of pain.
And I cannot remember his words.

Ottha kal-la nikhadengo,
My mother would say
To my stubborn father,
Or to her stubborn children:
Don’t stand on one leg!
( When he lost his left leg
Years later, she wept, when
He joked about his leg:
Paaru!  Ottha kal-la nikkeren!
Look!  Now, I can stand on one leg!)

He laughed and almost-cried
And we cried and laughed,
And I wish, I wish, he’d heeded
Her words to us us:

Medhuva, nidanama pannu,
Pada-padaanu pannadhe.
Molla nada, molla nada.

Do it slowly, do it calmly.
Do not hustle-bustle.
Walk slowly, walk slowly.

_____________________________________________________________

The NaPoWriMo prompt for Day eighteen:
(This was VERY hard for me!)

Tags: #Childhood, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram

Apr 17, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt:  Breath

Breathe!
© April 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Inspire me! 

My vision fails, and
My limbs are weak.
And all I hear is
My dog barking.
I am hungry.  I care
Only for food, and its
Atavistic satisfaction.
I wish to know how
To shape this day,
Stretch its sunshine
Into a perfectly folded
Sandwich, and eat it.

Respire deeply.

Meditate on your
Vision of a world
Without famine.
Go out, and gaze upon
The shy daffodils,
The narcissus and the
Hyacinth, now making bold
With the Spring-light,
And flaunting their young
Beauty in the amorous breeze.

Aspire to your other self –

Lying among the beaches of
The Milky Way, starry-eyed
You reach lazily for a cluster of
Constellations to nibble – ah
Just out of your reach!

Think not of unfinished work
(It will happen.)
Think not of goals you’ve
Misplaced or forgotten.
(Were they important?)
Think not of age creeping
Slyly up on you,
Stretching your cheeks,
Softening your chin,
Pulling at your eyelids.
Time is jealous of youth.
(Who cares?)
Do you see your other self?
See?  She smiles, stretches
Her galactic hand to you.
(Go on, grasp it!)

Suspire deeply:

When you are flung back onto
This sun-flecked present,
While a chickadee and a finch
Take turns at the bird-feeder,
Grateful for food; suspire, and
Remember your hunger
Sigh at your vast satisfaction
When you taste bread.
When the tedious days
Pull at your limbs, as the sun
Moves drunkenly through
The blue-saturated sky,
Go upstairs, leg dragging after leg,
Fall on the bed in slow motion,
Snooze and dream a happy dream
Of rabbits in Spring.

Conspire with me now:

How do we arrest this day,
Weaving a gossamer net
Of sunshine and flowers
And bird-song and slow hours,
Pull her to shore,
And still live long?
Harness the Sun, tempt his horses
With apples and grass,
Then recline and dream away
This lovely day.

Alas, it transpires that I have
Tedious tasks, and so do you.
We cannot linger, we must go.
The birds can dream, and so too
The dog, who gazes out full of
Joy this beautiful Sunday.

And before I expire from the
Loveliness and the quietude,
I turn at the knock on
My door.  The day beckons.
Go outside!  Walk the dog!

Spirit, mine,
Be gentle. Breathe quietly.
Let this day be long.
Let me walk in peace
Among the tall trees.

____________________________________________________________

Tags: #Breath, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #SpringtimeFantasy, #The Daily Prompt, #TheDailyPost

Apr 17, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt:  Disaster

No Words for This
©April 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

When the train pulled
Black and hateful and loud –
Loud as all of India –
Into that teeming station,
With thousands pushing,
Pummeling, yelling, crowding,
Cursing, shouting, shoving,
Grunting, hitting, rushing,
Punching, running, stumbling
Into that still moving train,
As it pulled into the platform,
And you slipped and fell,
And your leg was trapped
Between the train and the
Unrelenting platform, between
Hateful concrete, steel and stone,
You couldn’t cry out –
The pain was too large
For sound, too sudden
For speech, too cruel
For expression.

When you lay bleeding on the platform –
You leg hanging by a thread,
You were far from home,
And someone, a kind soul,
Took sense from your panting voice
Your fading consciousness,
And called home, four hours away,
To tell your wife, –
It was a cataclysm.

Railway porters, quick as fire,
Bore you away on a stretcher,
Tenderly like a mother with new babe,
Impelled by love and distress,
To the nearby hospital
And saved your life.

And when the news of all this
Came floating on the tide to me,
I lost my footing, slipped to the floor.
A little empty space
Opened up inside my stomach,
As if a universe had been carved away
And only dark matter remained.

And we thought you might die,
But you didn’t.
Laughing with deep sadness,
Making terrible puns,
Jokes in the worst taste,
You recovered, and ate well.
And we sighed, and prepared
To help you face a life
With one leg.
And my mother nurtured you
And kept you close, and
Tended to you, setting aside sadness –
Love in her every move.

And you lived on
For fifteen more years,
Even as cancer grew in you
From blood transfusions
Gone hideously awry.

It’s not fair! I yelled to the skies,
Not fair!
You died after cruel pain
Crucified your body,
And my mother faced
Life alone, mute and stoic,
Aching and struck silent
By unending sorrow.

There are no words
For this.

Disaster?

I spit in its face.

____________________________________________

Tags: #Disaster, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #RailwayAccident, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt

Apr 17, 2016 Free Verse, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry

Une Vie En Musique
©April 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Susurrando, susurrante,
A voice from another world
Speaks to me in honey-tones
Leaning seductively, caresses
My dream-state, and says:

Conduct yourself well
And tune to the bourdon-hum of life
Play your life-song rubato,
Steal from Time:
Steal all that you can steal
From the hours that crawl by
Seducing you with sweets.
Be not a slave to punctuality*,
And strangling parameters of
Suburban ennui.

Shift tempo now, do it suddenly
– make your life a rondeau.
Play it subito –
Hark back to your
Days of happy childhood,
Circle back to the present
Return to a later unhappy past,
Keep circling to the recent
Present, to the near-future.
Here’s a shadowed corner,
You can linger here, for now.
Sing of saudade, feel the
Longing sweep over you.
Are you done, now?

Good!  Go live allegretto
Avoid the lure of tenebroso
For too long;  just a touch
Makes one lacrimoso, – Enough!
That’s one tear too many.
Keep them for another day.

As you go through the hours,
Accelerando, then decelerando.
Why be predictable?
Consistency is the demon
That will kill.
Keep circling and return
Ad libitum to the start of it all.

I listen to the voice,
And heed its message.
Smiling, I lean into the darkness,
And whisper back:
Make my life a fermata.
And now, come, Messenger,
Come to me now, and
Piano, pianissimo,
Take me away!

___________________________________________________
Note:  I used The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (online) to come up with the musical terms in my poem (although I knew most of them, already).
* Reference to Oscar Wilde’s quip (which I must have certainly internalized as a young pre-teen): “Punctuality is the thief of Time.”

Here’s the prompt for Day 17 from NaPoWriMo:

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I challenge you to find, either on your shelves or online, a specialized dictionary. This could be, for example, a dictionary of nautical terms, or woodworking terms, or geology terms. Anything, really, so long as it’s not a standard dictionary! Now write a poem that incorporates at least ten words from your specialized source. Happy writing!

Apr 16, 2016 Free Verse, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry

Almanac-Poem:  Phoenix-Song
©April6th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Rising on wings of flame,
The phoenix sits atop a mango tree
And sings a lonely song
Calling my name.

A white-hot sun rains down sweat
And curls the ends of brinjal leaves
While busy caterpillars chew on a
Drumstick tree, where fat pods
Hang down like rain.

Incense, and prayers chanted in an
Ancient tongue wrought from myth
Snake out of open windows
And the boy next door
Gazes with open, foolish pre-teen
Longing over the fence, as I go
Sailing by on a red bicycle.

On the balcony, where I alone
Court the future, stands a girl of nine
And recites poems.
An unseen audience – future children –
Listen and learn, and float through
The air shimmering before her,
Like shoals of fish, translucent
And agape, bubbling soundless words.
And I, that girl, waving a frond of coconut tree
Or a leafy neem branch
 Which spills onto the flat, endless
Terrace above our house,
Conduct their attendant wonder.

All of nine, I stand
Dreaming of faraway worlds,
And teach, and speak in
Poetic utterance, part of the spell laid
On my young tongue.

Bell-bottoms, gypsy blouses,
Two tight plaits, fatly braided,
Ribboned in black, and dust-colored
From riding in the streets,
Stern-faced, duck-like,
Determined, she teaches –
She who I was, once.

Somewhere, a cow lows longingly
Dreaming of rich grass and hay,
As she roots among the rubbish troughs
On the side of the road,
In a South Indian city, her tail
Swatting greedy flies which torment, daily.

And a posse of street dogs howl
As an ambulance sing-songs
Down the road I knew so well,
And which I ruled on my red bicycle,
They run alongside,
Tongues hanging out, tails aloft,
Grins on their snouts,
Full of dog-shout.

Pigs gambol and snort among
Food-scraps and leaves, and sanitary pads
Thrown higgledy-piggledy into
The troughs where the stray cow searches
In vain, in vain. 
But they are kind, animals are;
They share space, as animals do –
Courteously, impassively.

Crows watch from telephone wires
Interested, ready to swoop, their
Black, beady eyes taking in the entire world
Looking for shiny things,
And tasty things.  They fear none –
None, but pigeons, who rule the cities,
And terrorize all with little ruby eyes.

At fourteen:  Flinging my fresh-washed,
Heavy hair back in a slow-motion
Spray of glittering diamonds
In the white-hot noon of a Tamil summer,
I stand sometimes at the water-pump
Near the well, and pump, and sing
To the still, trembling air.
And the crows on the mango trees answer me;
Crows and girl in harmony.
We take turns, the crows and I,
And listen well.  There is a joy
In simply being there, with
Every cell alive.  Every nerve sings.

Sometimes, guitar in hand, I lie back
On the terrace, and watch the yellow flowers
Drift down like a dream from a nearby tree,
And the honey of them makes me yearn,
And the stars are crowded like rice
In a violet-inky sky.
I dream of romance, and everything
Feels like silk and fire, like
Blood and gold, like pomegranates
And mangoes dripping juice
Down my chin.
Sometimes, being fifteen
Can be lovely.

Older me:  Walking down the street
I spot a dead rat, flung
Carelessly on the side of the road,
Empty eyes gazing at a yellow sky
In mute accusation.
I flinch, avert my gaze, move on.
A sudden grief seizes me.
So much life wastes away
In a heartless world.
Who will weep
For a dead rat?

And still, the phoenix sings,
Her lonely song rising up in
Shimmering waves of heat
And her song is for me alone,
The girl who flew away.

Still later:  Once, in another life
I went to the home of someone
I remember not.
And as I passed the wall of his
Mysterious house, stone-still
In hot sun, I saw a pearly
Snail, sunning itself on a stone.
Fat and pale, on a slimy track,
It sat, with perfect, curled shell
Sitting on its back, like a spring onion.

And the snail looked at me.
I looked back.
Recognition swept through us:
Acknowledgement, perhaps, apprehension.
The snail was the realized one,
I realized this simple fact.
Humbled, I bowed to her/him,
And went my way, filled with
Simple transcendence.
I was on snail-time.
And life slowed to a standstill –
All was well.

A remembered postcard from Brunei,
Makes sadness bloom,
And the words:  “Missing my family.
Stay strong.  It’s beautiful here.
The city is beautiful.  Wish you were here.
Practise your sitar. Study hard.
Obey your mother” are lemony-sour.
No mention of when he would return.

Another moment:
My sitar-teacher’s teacher visits,
And I, fat-braided, earnest, demure
Get my picture taken with The Great Man.
Behold:  Ravi Shankar and Tam-Bram girl
Sixteen, and sure of herself.
Knows where she’s going,
Sure she’ll get there.
No doubts, despite her father’s
Crippling debts, uncertainty, loss of home.
She knows one thing:
Music and language are hers.

There was a border somewhere,
But I didn’t walk to it,
And I didn’t hear the insidious plans,
That someone might have made
To take over the entire universe.

There was an alley once
And when I didn’t reach it,
I didn’t find the
Promised pot of gold.
But a rainbow that had bent
Kindly over me all the way
As I walked to its end,
Lifted and vanished, and I?
I felt suddenly golden.

What do I fear?

This is what I fear:
I fear the perfect worlds of
Goodnight Moon, its mouse, and clock and mittens.
I fear the aching sweetness of Big Red Barn
I fear for the future of The Quiet Farmer.
I fear for Owl Babies fearfully awaiting their mother
As the night deepens and she
Takes her time coming home with food.

This is what I fear:
Blindness to beauty,
Deafness to truth,
Loss of mind to anger, or sadness.

But I do not fear the receding past,
Or the rushing future,
Which speeds towards me
Like light-cars on a
Galactic highway.

I fear leaving my people
Behind when I go.
For, I wish to know that all
Their stories are written with
A happy ending.

I do not fear Death.
Death is my friend
Death is peace,
Death is fire and ash,
And the hush that settles
On a sunset world
When the dust settles
And the logs have died out,
And only the shape of
A body that once was,
Remains.

And I, the phoenix
Will still sing atop the mango trees
Dreaming myself in and out
Of this life and the next.

____________________________________________

Here is the prompt for Day Sixteen from NaPoWriMo:

And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, I challenge you to fill out, in no more than five minutes, the following “Almanac Questionnaire,” which solicits concrete details about a specific place (real or imagined). Then write a poem incorporating or based on one or more of your answers. Happy writing!

Almanac Questionnaire
Weather:
Flora:
Architecture:
Customs:
Mammals/reptiles/fish:
Childhood dream:
Found on the Street:
Export:
Graffiti:
Lover:
Conspiracy:
Dress:
Hometown memory:
Notable person:
Outside your window, you find:
Today’s news headline:
Scrap from a letter:
Animal from a myth:
Story read to children at night:
You walk three minutes down an alley and you find:
You walk to the border and hear:
What you fear:
Picture on your city’s postcard:

Tags: #AlmanacPoem, #GrowingupinSouthIndia, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Phoenix

Apr 14, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Suitcase

Suitcase-Blood
©April 14th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Pack your suitcase (tattered, but good)
Sling your instrument over your shoulder,
Look around quietly,
Take the measure of things,
And say,
“Bye, then!”
And leave.

The road unfurls before you,
The horizon pearl-pink.
You spend your time
Forgetting your life,
As you walk down, then up that road,
Towards that pale, glimmering
Line between here and there.

 And you forget all the way
Down the road to there.
Your suitcase, which held everything,
Starts slipping from your grasp.
When you trip beyond the horizon,
You let it fall open.
Everything spills on the road,
Everything you own, or held dear.

And that lute you held
So close to your heart
Falls from your grasp, too,
And lands, with a crack,
Then splits wide open,
Like a pomegranate, or a heart.

You gasp, and grasp a passing
Thought to keep from drowning,
And say, to the waiting air,
“Perhaps, I don’t want to leave,
After all.
This is my life, still. 
It is good.  It was good.
It was beautiful.
And so much music
Filled my days.”

And you stop there,
Stand and remember
All the things you forgot.
And your suitcase, still open
Bleeds upon the pavement.
And the lute is mute like a stone.
But you leave, silent and sore,
Without a backward glance.

Somewhere, you hear a string
Twanging.

__________________________________________
Submitting to both The Daily Post, and to NaPoWriMo

Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Suitcase, #The Daily Prompt, #TheDailyPost

Jul 21, 2015 Free Verse

Tags: #Original Poetry, Triumph

Jun 14, 2015 Free Verse

Tags: #Original Poetry, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, teacher retiring

Jun 5, 2015 Free Verse

Darkly, but Darkly

©June 5, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

I am here, and yet

I am not.  I exist somewhere.

You look at me,

Eyes opaque with layers

Of expectation, with preconceptions

Which pull like weights,

With ghosts that float upwards

From the wishes of others

Crowding around behind

Your gaze, hot and oppressive,

Dark, without stars.

What do you see?

Why this mockery?

Why this scorn and laughter?

Why the curled lip, the sneer?

Why this disrespect, this

Lack of courtesy?

Am I there for you

As a person, a teacher, a woman

A girl, a child, a student?

I am here, and I have been torn

From the womb of a richly

Happy, pregnant universe

That hummed to me

And lulled me to sleep

As I was being rocked within

Her spiral galazies.

In your gaze, here now,

I am reduced to a thing

A person who simply stands

In your way, speaking words

That ring hollow and meaningless,

While you chew on your gum,

Mindlessly playing with

A trivial toy.

In your gaze,

Am I narrow and tall

Or short and dark and wide

Like a spinning earth,

Whose equator grows,

And whose poles get flattened,

And whose gravity deepens

With time?

What do you want from me?

What does anyone want?

What do I want from you?

Probably nothing, really.

Or maybe, everything –

Everything that has no name,

That slides smoothly

Sideways between layers

Of a real world, a real life,

Slivering and splintering

That which is real into

Reflections upon reflections.

So, you want something, or nothing

From me, and so do I, from you.

Yet, here we are, fascinated,

Irritated, angry, disinterested,

Engaged, detached, leaning forward,

Pushing back, turning sideways.

Would you like to hear me speak?

You do?

I do.

First, you are filled with admiration,

And now, your head droops.

Is it too much, what I say?

Is it all too much,

All those words, those

Endless streams of words

Sweeping away all protest

All other things you wanted to say?

Am I real in your eyes?

Are you real in mine?

We see each other but

Through a glass,

And as we reach out,

Touch fingers, palms, hands

Shake hands,

The glass cracks and shatters

And we get cut to the quick.

So, we back away, and quickly

Conjure up another glass in its place.

In this, our world, things

Shift shape, scream, scatter,

Reform, melt and blend,

And blur, and re-form, all figures

In a hyper-real dream.

For, reality is

Entirely too much.

You see me.

I see you.

And we won’t know each other again,

As we gaze through a glass

Darkly, but darkly, searching in vain,

For all will have changed,

And we will not see us.

_____________________________________________________

Tags: #Communication, #Original Poetry, Expectations, Mirrors and reality, What others see when they see us, What we see when we see others

Jun 3, 2015 Free Verse

Tags: #Original Poetry, Dusk, Walking with my dog