Aug 16, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Things I Carried
©August 16th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Sitar and a suitcase, and a carry-on;
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde;
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare;
Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali and other poems,
T.S. Eliot’s poetry and William Wordsworth’s poetry
A slim volume of French poetry and my poetry,
And Jane Eyre, the heroine who overcame all odds;
A past life in a little pocket of memory;
A history of an ancient people, my people;
The home left behind, alive in my mind
Dreams of a new life waiting quietly for me;
And vibrant rhythm within, and so much music!
Absolute certainty in a life that lay beyond.
Oh, and no money at all –
Just youthfulness, and a sense of adventure,
And faith in a Benign Fate, and always, always
Love, love, love, love, crazy love.
And all this carried me here,
Twenty-eight years ago,
Where you waited for me
And welcomed me home.
_________________________________________________________
Tags: #Autobiographical, #Carry, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost
Aug 15, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Tanglements
©August 15th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
When the string comes unraveled,
It’s time to die.
It’s when it gets entangled
That life struggles forth.
And if it’s not complicated,
Is it worth it?
________________________________________
Tags: #Complicated, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost
Aug 15, 2016 Original Poetry, Senryu, The Daily Post
Reach
©August 15th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
She reached for the stars
But got a handful of dirt.
In every grain, Life.
___________________________________________
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #Reach, #TheDailyPost
Aug 12, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Surface-Tension
©August 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
©August 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Dreaming of depths unseen,
We float on wave after wave,
Tossed along by storm after storm.
We imagine the haunting sounds
Echoes of another world,
Reverberating, linking us,
Strand by strand to our past,
Our future, full of promises,
Full of consolation (Yes, we’ll
See each other again, someplace
Some time, if not now, in
Another form, another shape).
We long to know that there’s more –
More to make us feel
Other than merely mortal.
We call this The Veil,
The Dream, Maya.
Convinced
There’s more to Life,
We search for the elusive,
The Unattainable, envisioning
Untraversed spaces,
Unplumbed deeps that await.
But what if it were all surface?
What, then?
We shall have to build
A layer beneath,
And beneath that,
And more below those.
And layers above,
And more above those.
Then, with intake of breath
And clarity of mind,
We shall move between them,
In order to surface,
And draw a breath,
And heave ourselves ashore.
___________________________________________________
We float on wave after wave,
Tossed along by storm after storm.
We imagine the haunting sounds
Echoes of another world,
Reverberating, linking us,
Strand by strand to our past,
Our future, full of promises,
Full of consolation (Yes, we’ll
See each other again, someplace
Some time, if not now, in
Another form, another shape).
We long to know that there’s more –
More to make us feel
Other than merely mortal.
We call this The Veil,
The Dream, Maya.
Convinced
There’s more to Life,
We search for the elusive,
The Unattainable, envisioning
Untraversed spaces,
Unplumbed deeps that await.
But what if it were all surface?
What, then?
We shall have to build
A layer beneath,
And beneath that,
And more below those.
And layers above,
And more above those.
Then, with intake of breath
And clarity of mind,
We shall move between them,
In order to surface,
And draw a breath,
And heave ourselves ashore.
___________________________________________________
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #Surface, #TheDailyPost
Aug 10, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
This, Maybe
©August 10th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
You walk along the path together,
Cocooned in yourselves, and growing,
Looking out at the reservoir nearby
Flashing silver amongst tall trees.
The birds are muted, lonely,
The trees noisy, conferring.
The underbrush hints of hidden
Creatures, crawling or hopping.
Legs flash by, all in a hurry
To get somewhere, do something.
People running, dogs alongside.
The sky bends tightly over them.
You talk of life, politics, books,
You don’t talk of love, longing.
You swim in the silence of possibility
Wondering of a future life together.
This is the time of learning
This is the magic time before
Understanding blooms in your heart,
And you think, This is it, maybe.
_________________________________________________________
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Maybe, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Possibility, #Postaday, #Romance, #TheDailyPost
Aug 9, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Joke No More
©August 9th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Why don’t you do us a favor
And jump off a bridge?
No one likes you, they said.
She made her heart a stone
And wrote a note
And shed no tears
As she walked to the bridge
Fragile and pale
A wraith in the dusk.
And she did what
They had told her to do.
Her life was a mistake,
She said to herself,
A joke, and she was just
Composing its punchline.
A bird soaring into a sky
With wings of lead,
And leg-irons, she sailed
Off the bridge,
The waiting river received her
With more welcome in death
Than any she had seen in life.
And when they were questioned
And prodded in court,
They said, puzzled and innocent,
It was only a joke.
Who knew she’d take
Everything so seriously?
______________________________________________________
Tags: #bullies, #bullying, #DailyPrompt, #Joke, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost
Aug 7, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Painted World
©August 7th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
If I took a broad brush,
Dipped it in no colour,
Whispered a prayer to the moon,
Bent my head to the sun,
And slashed the air around me,
Would I erase all ugliness
All pain, all horror from the world?
What of all its beauty,
All that pouring light,
All that blinding blue,
All its music and movement,
All of its innocence and joy?
Would I filter its discoveries
Back into my paint-pots
And guard them jealously
So, I could start over?
And what of its ambiguities?
What of its doubts?
What of its struggles?
What of its dreams?
Would I siphon those into tubes
Ready to squeeze out
When things get old
Or tired, or tedious?
And would I be able to paint
A whole new world
From scratch?
And what would I paint?
And what if I were
A terrible painter?
_______________________________________________
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Paint, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost
Aug 5, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Crossing
©August5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Come, lift your hands in praise.
Praise the woman who stands
Smiling, calm, unbent in the gale,
Maligned and slandered.
Praise the steely strength
The resolve that could move mountains
The centre of peace that allows
Her boat to bob on the waves
As she rows, tirelessly
To unknown terrain, but which exist,
For she mapped them out.
Praise the larger purpose
Which is her rudder, and her guide
The larger purpose and the greater good.
Beyond her own needs, the needs of her kin,
Lies the greater good of all,
And she will not be satisfied until
She works till the end of her life for it.
Praise her, and help her.
Guide her, too, for she is not infallible,
And she sometimes mistakes the way.
Praise her, and help her.
But while she has no need of praise,
She has deep need of help.
And while the other side is mapped
There’s still the Crossing ahead,
And there are Scylla and Charybdis
Waiting to devour her and her boat.
Slay them.
________________________________________________________
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #GreaterGood, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #Praise, #Rudder, #Strength, #TheDailyPost, #Women
Aug 4, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Grape-Craving
©August 4th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I crave grapes.
Yes, grapes!
Rich, luscious, succulent,
Tight-skinned, green-gemmed
Bursting-at-the-seams
Grapes!
Like chrysoprase cabochons
Strung together, grapes
Shining in the light, those
Green gems so tight,
Make me crave them.
Their translucence drives
Me sick with desire
And their sweetness
Causes me to swoon.
Grapes that ripen slowly
In the hot sun,
Inviting greedy raccoons
To feast at night.
Ah, those grapes!
Grapes, which, when you pluck them,
Give out an audible sigh of desire
And say, “Yes! Oh yes!”
And I imagine silken curtains
And sylph-like ladies
Passing them out on burnished plates.
And lazy, overfed Romans lying about
Eating the clustered globes
Filled with nectar that would
Intoxicate if they were allowed
To ferment into wine.
Now, as I write this, I arise,
Open the refrigerator,
Grab a container of washed grapes
And eat them, two by two,
Four by four.
I am sick with sweetness.
Drunk with greed.
So … sick, so drunk.
(Why did I do this?!)
(Why bother with wine
If you can have grapes?!)
No! I am not Lucullus,
Nor was meant to be;
I’m just a lowly grape-eater
Hedonist before bedtime.
My dreams shall be sweet.
And I shall be well-satisfied.
______________________________________________________
Tags: #Craving, #DailyPrompt, #No!IamnotPriceHamlet, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #T.S.EliotReference, #TheDailyPost
Aug 4, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Afternoon-Flight
©August 4th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Flash of blue sails across sun-drenched air.
Japanese maple stands, glad to receive bird
With open branches and dappled leaves.
Glints of gold on green and flutter of leaf and feather
Gently open my tight-breathing heart,
With its Elsewhere just a step away,
And pour in peace.
Blue-jay, harsh of voice, but oh, so grateful
For air and light and shelter!
Traffic sounds from far away, a soft reminder
Of human time.
But why remember it?
Time is a thief.
Human time is bondage time.
Bird-time is peace.
And tree-time, endless.
_____________________________________________________________
Tags: #Birds, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Peace, #Time, #Trees