Jan 6, 2018 Original Poetry
Pre-Set
©January 6th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Blue skies meet green trees in artificial heat,
And the sunlight borrowers make it day
Where night presses against windowpanes:
A dark-eyed orphan child viewing sweets, and
Forbidden entry by those
Who, spurning reality, make
Its twin indoors.
The curtain rises.
The world sits in suspended animation.
I wonder whether my child is playing music
With my husband, or listening to music,
Or reading, or sewing at home.
I wonder these things for a couple of seconds,
Then, walk into this pre-set world.
Reality recedes into a corner,
And watches its twin.
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Jan 5, 2018 Original Poetry
Diamond and Silk, and Star-shine and Dark
©January 5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Diamond voice in the other room
Cuts the air into brilliant shreds
Silken voices catch those threads
And stitch them back again.
Your voice, a diamond cut from light,
Is made of star-shine in the dark
I treasure it and hold it dear
Even as it makes me bleed.
And yours, my darling, silken soft,
And spun with radiant mystery
If only it would not fade out
When held right close to me.
And starlight cannot compete, child,
With silken threads that seem so light
But silken threads cannot compete
With sharp-edged brilliant light.
I walked into the night-time air
Parting those shreds in greedy haste
Your voice of silk clung to my clothes,
Which trailed me as I walked.
I reached for star-shine, reached for dark
I reached for radiance, met you where
The diamond shatters when it’s thrown
But silk threads put it back again.
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(P.S. I have NO idea why I wrote this! It’s not a reference to ANYTHING!)
Jan 4, 2018 Original Poetry
Genesis – II
(During Bombogenesis)
©January 4th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
We are orphans, those of us
Who think, and feel.
We are orphaned by our gods,
Or God, or the Goddess.
No longer can we cry out to Them,
Or Him, or Her.
Our collective imaginations,
And our collective child-hearts
Grew up, and let Them / Him / Her
Die in the dust of Truth.
For Truth is the dust that swirls
Around our heads,
Now, white like the snow plummeting
Like a descending Darwesh,
To muffle our cries, and stun us
With its power –
Now, white like the sands that
Swirl and shift in treacherous lands
Where the ground can vanish
Under our feet, and we are
Abandoned, abandoned.
We are orphaned, for we
Reject the Voice on High.
We reject the comfort of stories,
Lies that help us through
Times of turmoil, Lies which
Sustain and bear us aloft,
(And carry us, unresisting, to
Our cold, lonely deaths).
We are orphans, yes,
But we will find a new path,
And meet our true friends, and
Our true Destinies.
And Orphans will lead the way,
If there is a way left for us to lead.
And if not, we will make one,
Even if the snow muffles our cries,
And only a few, or Two, are left
Standing on the cold, desolate
Ice of a new Age, a new Race –
Perhaps, with wings, this time.
And will we, then, be
New Gods?
And will we become fiction,
Lies, rejected by any
Who come after?
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Tags: #Bombogenisis, #NewAge, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 3, 2018 Original Poetry
For Eric and Erica
©January 3rd, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
I can’t breathe, he said, eleven times.
His breath left in a last, choked exhale
Vanishing into the pollution of a
Dying afternoon in New York City.
The police, satisfied that they’d
Done their job, waited for seven minutes
For the medics.
It was just another day for them.
Three years later, his daughter lies dead.
She fought to keep his name alive,
And now she’s gone.
Weep for her, America!
Where are your tears?
People abducted, enslaved, freed, betrayed,
Live and die on your streets, America.
You kill your children every second.
You take them by the neck and squeeze them dry,
And fling them away, and order your sidewalks cleared.
And the rich sneer at the husks of humanity
On their streets, and brush off their dust
From their designer clothes,
Noses pinched, and mouths in a straight line.
And the middle-class, eager to emulate,
Scurry in their wake, buying cars and clothes
They cannot afford, mocking the poor.
And the poor spurn those who lie
Wretched, wasted on street-corners.
And you break their hearts,
You break their lives, America.
Are you not satisfied yet?
How many more choke-holds
Will satiate your breath-lust?
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Tags: #EricaGarner, #EricGarner, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 1, 2018 Original Poetry
All Our Yesterdays
©January 1st, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
All my yesterdays behind me
Galloped down the sloping road
As I stood at the edge
Of the receding year,
Shielding my eyes from today.
And the rest of my life.
The coming days, Fetches all,
Move through my cells,
And leave behind their husks,
Drifting away, wraith-like,
Even as I meet them,
And keep meeting them,
And will keep on meeting them,
As they move, will move,
Will have moved, through me.
And Time has no meaning,
No meaning at all, and still,
I check the clock, and still,
I mark my Calendar, and still,
Look forward to every new day,
Even as it passes through me,
Into the rising dust of all
The days galloping by.
It is this movement I greet,
As I stand in the revolving spot
Of the Eternal Now,
Even as I age, and wither, and
Dissolve into gold dust.
What this means does not matter,
The revolving spot turns, and
I turn and face everywhere, everywhen,
At once, at the same time,
Running into my own face,
Even as I turn and turn, to watch
The days gallop past, fast.
And you are my face, and you, as well.
And I am yours, and yours, as well.
Hold hands, here, in the Revolving Now.
Let the days pass through us all.
And while we’re at it, at our eternal solstice,
Let us make flowers bloom, sing our songs,
And cleanse the air, and feed the young.
They do not know, yet, but they will, soon.
And we must prepare them.
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Dec 31, 2017 Original Poetry
Nightfall When the Play is Done
©December 31st, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Night falls suddenly, like a curtain
When the play is done.
The Players strip their clothes,
Sip wine, or water, mill about,
Eat chocolate, chat, stare into space,
Play chess, rest their legs, stretch.
Music from another room
Drifts like smoke among the voices,
And someone sings a dark song.
The unreal gets real when night arrives,
Wine flows into plastic cups downstairs,
But slowly, amidst bright conversation.
Compliments, and laughter, and
Satie music from an old piano swirl,
In the spilling light of golden lamps.
And someone sings a dark-eyed song.
Night falls suddenly, like a curtain
When the stage-lights go out.
Slowly, the Others drift away,
And one person goes from room
To dark room, turning out the lights,
Collecting clothes left on the floors.
And Silence claims her dominion.
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Dec 30, 2017 Original Poetry
Spillage
©December 30th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The clock ticks on and on.
An endless litany of eternity
Talking to Time, it moves
Chasms of seconds around
Circular paths, craters of minutes,
Into which I fall, endlessly.
Time casts a spell, but it is brittle
In the face of these typing hands.
I can splinter Time into shards
And poke at my mind, till, gasping, it
Spills words upon white, virtual pages –
They flow aimlessly, like blood.
The clock ticks. A vein pulses.
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Dec 30, 2017 Original Poetry
At Year’s End
©December 30th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The days hurtle towards their end,
And the year gets ready, unhooking itself
To turn on its hinge, to let them through.
There are things to look back on.
I’d rather not.
The dust rises under the hoofs
Of fast-approaching year-end days
And the riders are bright like the sun.
I remember good times,
And smile as they ride by.
I see the darker times,
And shade my eyes, blinkered.
Mostly, I see love, and gladness,
And growing things, and joy.
I hear my daughter’s voice, mine,
And my husband’s, as we raise
Them in song together.
Mostly, I remember the padding
And clatter of my dog’s feet,
The hurling excitement of her fifty pounds
As she sees me home after a long day.
Mostly, I blot out the horrors of a world
Lying on the roadside, oozing blood.
Of children, of families, of women,
Of countries, dying in the dust.
Yes, mostly, I shield my eyes, and smile
At that which brings remembered joy.
For, if I were to unfasten the armour
That shields me, and let the rest in,
I would dissolve, or burst into
A million pieces.
I’d rather not –
Not just yet.
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Dec 29, 2017 Original Poetry
Lighthouse
©December 29th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Once, old age shone like a lighthouse
Beckoning me onward towards
Enlightenment, peace.
Not so, now.
I do not wish to grow frail
I don’t wish to totter and fall
I don’t wish to burden the earth.
I wish to die fit, and full of life.
The anguish of the crumbling bone,
The horror of the throat gone dry,
The pain of loss upon loss
As time unfolds its heartless form –
These are not things I wish to own.
I do not care for youth, either.
Not for me the callous cruelty,
The laughter of those who fail to see
What suffering does, what life makes.
Not for me the agonies of first love,
The self-abnegation, the sudden tempers
Of thwarted desires, the onslaught of tears,
The ambition that rises unchecked.
No, youth and age are not for me.
And yet, when I see my old Pati,
My aging mother, my aging relatives,
My heart quails, grows cold with dread.
I want to keep them close to me,
Hold them so they will not fall,
I want Time to grant them long life,
For I am selfish, and I want to
Bind them forever to my Present.
They are my gifts, my treasure,
The silver threads in the net
Of a life I’m still weaving,
While the boat I’m on tacks, veers,
Towards, and away, from my destination.
And when I cast that net on the waves
It catches a gleam of gold,
As the lighthouse shines on it,
And within the net, a surprised fish,
Its opening mouth, a-gasp,
A whisper of my mortality.
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Dec 28, 2017 Original Poetry
No Voice
©December 28th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
In the heart of the deepest night
Shines a diamond in the mind of One
Who dreamed a universe into awakening.
She dreams, and her dreams coil
Like many serpents in the churning ocean
Tossing up many worlds, and dragging them
Deep, deep into a forest of seaweeds.
She dreams, and her dreams catch her,
Grabbing at her ankles, and dragging her
Into the night, the churning ocean of mind.
And quiet as the quietest breath, sits
The diamond, growing larger,
Cutting into her throat,
Tearing through her voice.
Shredded and ripped, her voice trails
Like smoke, like rough-edged strips
Of cotton and silk, wanting mending.
The dreams, serpentine, catch her
And toss her into the seaweeds,
And she has no voice, no voice at all
To stop them.
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