Jun 16, 2015 Light verse
Deeper than Silence
©June 15th, 2015
Vijaya Sundaram
gentle twang of strings
thrilling to ten-year old
tender fingers in golden
room filled with sweet childhood.
clicking of keys on computer
here in room awash in
sweeps of scarves and sheets.
whoosh of cars outside
dividing rain-washed streets
flinging aside water
cutting through space
hiss of electricity
the steady hum of it
permeating the air
outside my ears makes me
still, stiller than still
retreating to a place
deeper than silence.
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Tags: #Original Poetry, Daughter playing guitar, Rainy day, Silence
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.
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Tags: #Communication, #Original Poetry, Expectations, Mirrors and reality, What others see when they see us, What we see when we see others
May 20, 2015 Original Poetry
Still Point
©May 20th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
First, your backbone fuses.
Then, your fingers grow numb, and your toes tingle.
Then, your arms and legs refuse to move.
Then, your face refuses to register your thoughts.
Then, your heart stops.
Then, your eyes stare, full,
So full of galaxies,
No one can bear to see them.
So they close your eyes gently,
Watching your last exhale
Float upwards, a wisp of self —
Floating, then gone.
And you tumble headlong into that tunnel
And your life stretches behind, and above,
And below, and in front of you,
Whirling swirls of life, churning
Out of a primordial Life.
And all those you knew,
Stand ranged along the tunnel
Like images on subway walls
Speeding past, while you stand still,
Their smiles stretched past you.
Their tears scatter on your
Speeding form, like water dashing
Off the roof of a car.
And all those things that
Kept you up at night,
And all those things that
Made you rage blindly,
Made you happy, made you delirious,
Made you ecstatic, made you quiet,
All those things speed by,
Dreams within a dream,
Back, back into that period
Where all light and all darkness
Fused to a single point,
Back through the time before time,
To that still point,
Just before it all began.
Before it will all begin,
Again.
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Tags: Still Point
May 17, 2015 Original Poetry
Today in Song and Air
© May 16th, 2015
Vijaya Sundaram
Cheerful, tender birdsong fills the languid air.
I feel cheerful, tender and languid.
I do not feel like working.
I want to be a bird.
I want to be air.
I cannot wait,
For one day, I shall
Be air and spirit and song
And fire and sun and blinding light
And not even remotely made of flesh and bone.
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Tags: #Original Poem
May 11, 2015 Original Poetry
Courage
Or
Writing Your Novel
© May 11, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Let your person sprout her wings
Let her fall on small blue things.
Let him stand up really tall or
Make him shrivel up so small.
Let him quarrel, let her fight
Let them be wrong, and then be right.
Let them love and let them hate
Show them truth early or late.
Let them die, or let them live
Let them take, and let them give.
Lead them from each other,
Back to sister, brother, father, mother.
Make their friends their fiercest foes
So they can stumble, fall and know
What living is, what life can be.
And thus your novel is reality.
Tags: Courage to write, Writing advice
May 3, 2015 Current Affairs / General Interest, Original Poetry
They Will Not Die (Elegy #2 for Freddie Gray)
By Vijaya Sundaram
©May 2nd, 2015
Freddie Gray is dead,
Voice-box crushed,
Back broken in a
Nickel-ride homicide.
Was there hope for Freddie Gray,
Gray in a grey world?
Nebulous justice rules, a
Cloudy truth in the world of
The makers and breakers.
Hope is crushed, lowered
Into the ground,
Back in the box whence she came.
Yet, voices outside speak aloud
Angry and proud, people stand
And march, and … then throw rocks.
For, when words don’t work, what’s left?
When actions born of peace
Lead to laughing contempt,
Blank indifference, grudging handouts,
What’s left?
When blinded eyes, blinded mouths,
Blinded hearts, blinding fears
Rule the rulers, and crush
The ruled and the damned,
What else is left?
And a city burns,
Children cry out, eyes stretched wide
And injustice rides
Comfortably, now in blue,
Shielded by certainty
That they will not lose
This game, their game.
For they own the weapons
They own the power
They own it all,
But they will never
Own the truth.
And Justice will come
For they do not own her, either,
Just her simulacrum.
And they will receive just desserts
And face an eternity
Where unending despair
And hungry remorse will
Claw and gnaw at their vitals,
And they will not die.
And Freddie Gray
Will live, if we let him,
If we remember.
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Tags: Baltimore, Freddie Gray, Police, Race, Remember
May 3, 2015 Current Affairs / General Interest, Original Poetry
Speak – A Lamentation
By Vijaya Sundaram
©May 2nd , 2015
Spine broken,
Voice box crushed,
Yet another young man
Dies, beaten in the race
Of life.
Twenty-five years alive —
Now, older than time.
Life stretched before him
Before death came
Cruelly, in the back
Of a nickel-ride van.
He broke his own spine, they say.
They lie! How they lie!
Our hearts fail us, sense falters —
Brazen untruth spewed from mouths of
Killers, snuffers of the weak,
The disenfranchised,
Our police ride strong,
While a son is dead.
He broke his own spine, you say?
I laugh in disbelief.
But some buy their story
Listening with stretched ears
To lies pouring from all sides.
For lies sustain some,
And comfort them, while
They sit spellbound,
While flat-screens, plasmic,
Pour out flat people
Speaking flatly about
A three-dimensional world
Rendered two-dimensional —
A grotesque Guernica
Sans history, sans meaning,
To those who sit,
Gesturing with painted fingernails,
Dyed hair, painted-on smiles,
Or communing with
Neatly slicked-back hair and
Business suits, patent-leather shoes,
Sputtering about matters they know not of.
But this death looms over us, while
Yet more voices arise —
An ark on a wave of sorrow.
And who will ride this wave?
And who will bring the ark
To land again?
And who will bring back
The olive branch, the olive leaf
And who will sight land?
And who will stand tall
And who will speak
And whose backs
Will take the weight
Of all they need
To build again, anew?
And who will remember
And mourn all the
Freddie Grays
Of the world
Extinguished, voiceless,
Back broken?
And who will speak for them?
And who will listen?
And who will heal
A nation that kills its own?
Tell me when you know.
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Apr 10, 2015 Original Poetry
Waiting to be Found
©April 10, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
I see you, intent, focused
On shadows and light,
And I see your eyes move
As you follow fantasies
On flat, hollow surfaces,
Made and sold everywhere
For you.
And I wish I could
Blow away the cobwebs
In your mind
And open windows
And fling open doors
And sweep out the floors
For you!
I feel for you,
Ensconced in darkness
Playing with shadows,
Imagining you’re happy
With games and candy,
Perhaps thinking
What’s out there?
Out there are stars,
And sky, and clouds
And birds, and trees
And flowers and bees,
Waiting to be found.
And angles and angels,
Archetypes and archangels
And anarchy and autarchy
And humanity and divinity
Waiting to be found.
And songs and poems,
And inventions and theories
Dreams and prophesies,
And a wildly spinning earth,
All waiting to be found.
One day, there will be you,
Held aloft by loose string,
Looking for all of this,
For a way out of all that,
Waiting.