Mar 31, 2015 Original Poetry
Hum-Ant
© March 31st, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Gaea awakens from a troubled dream.
Ants crawl over her sleeping, aging
Rocks, her streams and plumes of
Buried hair and abused bones,
Like carbon unredeemed.
Hum-ants, building anthills everywhere
Tickle, bite, pluck, rip,
Carry on war and kill for fun,
And maim her trees, and
Muddy her waters, and choke her air.
The Titans do her bidding again.
Happy to serve her, they stir
Restlessly, they arise, full
To the gorge with vengeful
Intent, with billennia of pain.
Churning the waters above, blind,
They groan, and grind plate
Against continental plate.
Stretching, yearning, shoving
Landmasses aside, they grind.
All will be changed, all.
Run, for the waters WILL rise,
Or learn to swim.
Run, for the unforgiving sea
Will swarm over our cities
And swallow our cries.
All will be changed, all.
Run, and as you run,
Sing to the crying sky
And the grinding earth.
Sing of your history
As you follow the sun.
All will be changed, all.
Sing the song of innocence
And the songs of knowledge.
Sing the praises of your mother
And forgive the hurtful words
You uttered, and made no sense.
All will be changed, all.
Sing of stirring into being
And careening into death,
Eyes wide, stretched
Wide to accommodate
Light-years of stars, still unseeing.
All will be changed, all.
Sing of hope, of all the shoulds
Of ambivalence and despair,
Of words understood and
Of words misunderstood.
All will be changed, all.
Sing of forests felled for highways
And buildings arrogantly
Reaching for the sky, crushing
Life out of sidewalks, die-ways.
All will be changed, all.
Sing now.
Or learn to fly,
And take off before
That final tidal wave
Envelops us all.
Or, better still, let the storm
Transform our cry.
All will be changed, all.
Disintegrating into atoms,
We shall be simple matter
Once again, a part of
Earth and Stars,
Blown from the palm of
A Titan’s hand, phantoms.
All will be changed, all.
Like stardust, we will blow
Into the void that waits,
We hum-ants will know,
At that final moment,
That from humus we come
And to humus we will go,
For that is what becomes of us.
Human we are, humble, humus.
All will be changed, all.
_______________________________________________________
Tags: #Gaia, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, Climate Change, Gaea, Hum-Ant
Feb 24, 2015 Original Poetry
Glacial Epoch
©February 24th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Part I
On these cold, white, muffled February days,
With heaped snow all around,
And chill creeping into our lives,
An insidious whisper,
An irreversible trend,
With ice-caps melting, oceans rising,
Poseidon winning this round,
Glaciers the size of countries breaking off
Into an endless turning, churning,
Burning ocean, with dying krill,
And beached dolphins, broken whales,
And vanishing fish and blocked-up birds,
I go into survival mode,
Existing (comfortable, yes),
Living only for family and dog.
Guitar music drifts down
I stare dimly out the window
Watching flurries of snow —
Wayward thoughts of winter.
If this is the end of the world,
We won’t die of thirst at any rate.
I think into my Madras coffee,
Eat my veggie-burger sandwich,
Break sunshine from my clementine,
Drink in its gold and gleam,
Grateful for the here and now.
I will need these memories
For the there and then of the future,
Where ghosts wait.
Part II
You know your place
When the enemy shows its face
You know you can fight or flee,
For you know (though you may
Not be free)
What you’re fighting for.
And though it hurts and burns
Boring a hole you cannot ignore,
All the way through to the centre of you.
(It’s up to us to do what we must.)
You arise, and fight for right,
Not scared to break, or die,
Or acquiesce, or desist,
Your heart a tightened fist.
At least you know your place,
When you can see
Your enemy’s face.
It’s when the enemy
Smiles at you, then
Turns its back,
Whispers, glances at you
Then away, smirking,
Shoulders you out,
Ignores your voice
Demanding their ears,
Listens with veiled eyes,
(Curtains drawn over darkened rooms
Allowing no light, no air, no thought
No time to spare for you or yours,)
Shocked by your intelligence,
Then denies your truth, learning,
Insight, power, compassion
Uses cryptic speech,
Condescends —
Then, it’s worse than open warfare.
When the hypocrite dons its mask,
Your truth moves farther and farther
Away, slipping over the horizon,
Into a deeper trough than will be found —
Just shadows and froth left in
The wake of your enemy’s
Glacial smile.
…
But even glaciers will break off
And the ocean will win.
But your truth will rise again
And float upon the waves,
And perhaps a bird will
Alight upon your shoulder,
Bringing news of a newer
Pangaeic world, where
You and others can begin again.
Dropping enormous thoughts
You smile, turn away from
Window, white sky, back-yard, and
Resolutely switch on the kitchen light.
A dog needs attending to.
A child calls to you.
A song your husband plays
On his guitar pulls you back to
Avalon, After the Ball.
Ghosts can wait.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tags: #Family, Climate Change, existence, February daze, glaciers, racism, snowstorms, weather
Feb 17, 2015 Original Poetry
Is This What Dying Feels Like?
©February 17th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
SIlence and darkness
Press down, down
Memory packed down
Like Arctic snow,
Now melting,
Ready to release
Plumes of methane
From old monsters
Buried in the deep,
And she thinks,
That letter! I forgot
To burn that letter!
____________________________________________________
Tags: #Death, Arctic snow, Dying, Memory, Methane
Jan 24, 2015 Original Poetry
Snow Fall
©January 24th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
White drifts down,
A reminder that
The world will be renewed.
And that hills and trees,
Stripped of color
Are still beautiful.
And this white and brown
And black world, so gentle
So muted, so tender
Obscures the memory of
A harsher place waiting outside
The edges of window frames.
Suit up and take
My Eager Doggess for a walk.
And now, these are my reality:
A snuffly nose,
A waggling tail,
A smiling dog —
Forget all else, just
Skid and slip
On sidewalks down steep
Slopes in my up-and-down
Neighborhood, shaped
By an erratic earth epochs ago.
And think of fifty-year old bones
Breaking and cracking on
Empty streets, dragged
Down by dog in haste,
Yell to her urgently: Slow down!
She does, befuddled.
Turn resolutely back,
Find a safer, straighter,
Quicker way home.
No broken bones,
No bruises or bumps.
Strangely, after all is over,
Reflect, drinking hot tea, that
Moments of sheer terror
Carry their own pleasure.
But don’t risk all for it.
Do not fall.
Falling is for the young.
There is a slight pang,
The memory of a deep gong within me.
Shrug, move on,
Falling is for the young, I say firmly.
Look out my windows,
Glad to be home.
Let my gaze caress the sky,
And the earth hums
With quiet satisfaction,
While she laps at her water
Noisy, unselfconscious.
It’s good to be still vertical
In a snow-veiled world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #Winter, 2015, Chronicles of Holly, Snowfall, Walk with dog
Jan 17, 2015 Original Poetry
The air coalesces around me,
Whispering about the world.
And it’s not happy.
Being older, perhaps wiser,
Perhaps, more thin-skinned than before,
I see hurt, and hurt more within than ever.
I see injustice, and burn more than ever
I see evil, and wish for it to go away,
Not wanting revenge or retaliation.
I see cartoons aimed at “secularism”
And see them as an attack on others’
Strong beliefs, in fragile souls,
In countries broken by injustice and bombs
And hatred.
And the countries lie strewn
With lost dreams, decapitated bodies,
Ravaged women, broken children,
And a desert wind blows a chill
Despair over them all,
And the cries of those in pain
Are wafted like the smell of death
Over the land.
I see ravaged cities and broken homes
And beautiful countries destroyed,
And I weep and weep.
I weep for the children
Of these lands, innocence
Forever genuflecting
To those enthroned in power
And speak with weapons.
Kite-strings cut, soccer balls
In piles of refuse, schools and books burnt,
The children cry out, and we walk
Through the streets, hands in pockets,
Whistling, thinking of dinner.
I weep for their parents, bound and helpless
Brutalized and tortured
Watching a fate worse than death
Unfold before their eyes.
And I feel helpless,
May goodness follow the children
May they have parents
And grandparents
To hold their hands, and pass on
Tradition and celebration and the past,
May they have strength to learn,
To grow, and give,
And compassion to hold them up,
Smiling to the sky.
I wish for empathy in those who
Capture and imprison them
In hellholes of horror.
Restore their humanity,
Restore kindness
Restore pity and compassion,
And love and remorse
In them.
In a world whose beauty
Tastes indescribably sweet
Whose air, and earth, and water
Give and give, strained to the utmost,
Whose people simply want to live
Unmolested by the powerful,
I wish for peace
I wish for a world-soul.
I wish for love.
I wish for hope.
Is this too much to wish for?
For our children call to us
And their mothers, too,
And their fathers,
And all those without either.
And their voices float, long after death
On the air which touches us,
As the world spins round and round,
And their question should make us
Clench our fists, and cry out
And march for justice,
March for peace,
March for all who suffer
And stop the haters,
And stop the murderers,
And the rapists, and the wars
And the torturers and the Beast-ridden
Hearts of the soulless men
And women who walk this earth
Beside us, looking normal
Not human,
Not animals, not men
Or women who were born
Of man and woman.
Make them human again,
I whisper, looking at the
Air touching me.
The air hums absently,
And moves on.
_______________________________
P.S. Sorry, I have no real poetic imagery today — just wishes.
Jan 16, 2015 Original Poetry
Air and You, and I
©January 16th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
A bird flies
An arrow in the air
Shot from a twanging earth
Into an indifferent sky,
Exulting in flight.
Slicing the air,
Smiting the blue,
It flies, heedless of
Its effect on me, the Watcher,
Its wings flap, unsteady,
And then even out
Steady as sails in the wind
On an ocean that calls me,
But still terrifies.
And the air which turns to wind
Descends and snakes around my skin.
The same air the bird sliced in two
Touches me,
And then, you.
So, we stand, in different lands,
Our skin tingling with mystery,
Linked by a bird which
Slices the air,
Displaces it,
Spills it, and moves on.
Will we, if we meet,
Know each other?
Will we, when we meet,
Say, It was you to each other?
Will we shake hands
Or fight?
Will we hug each other,
Or smite first?
All this air, going round and round
And round and round,
And round and round,
An endlessly rotating earth
Has touched you, and you
And you, and you.
We breathe in each other’s air,
Our ancestors’ air.
We sigh out air and cry out air.
We sing air, and bring air,
We plummet in air,
Climb summits in air.
We eat bursts of air
In water, when we drown,
And heat air when
Our planes rise up.
You are my brother, my sister,
My father, my mother,
My friend, my lover,
My self, my other.
Why such strife,
Then?
Come, let us share
This lovely air.
And this bird, winging back down,
Come, bird, alight on my arm,
Thank you for spilling
All this beautiful, sunlit
Song-lit, space-lit
Air!
Thank you for letting me dream
Thank you for that song that streams
Down, and down, around us.
Thank you for rising up
And winging
And singing
And wheeling
And reeling in
All this air!
For today, I was sad.
And I didn’t see you,
Not exactly.
I just made you appear
In my head, and there you were,
Real, solidly soaring
Slicing into the air.
And you brought me relief
And you brought me peace
And you made me cut the knot
That held me down.
I know there are more knots.
But right now, breathing
In and out, quietly,
Surrounded by voices
Ephemeral as you,
I imagine you, O Bird,
And you, O Person,
On the shores of
A faraway land,
Smiling at the sun,
Breathing our air.
And around me,
On me, from feet
To head,
The air tingles
On the skin
I’m in, floating
In a bubble of air
In the emptiness
Of space.
______________________________________________________
Tags: #Connectedness, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, Air and You, and I
Jan 14, 2015 Music, Original Poetry
The Greek Myth that Influenced Two of my Songs (YouTube links)
By Vijaya Sundaram
Among all the Greek myths, the myth of Icarus and the story of Daedalus always captured me in a way I cannot fully explain.
The image of a young boy spinning up into the sky, exulting in his freedom from gravity, disobeying the voice of reason and caution (his father’s), and paying the price for it, always stayed with me. And I imagined that Icarus, foolish though he was, made it to the sun, whom he seemed to worship more than the moon (after whom he was named by his Cretan mother). Not only that, I imagined that he met the sun-beings who beckoned him to join them inside and beyond the sun. Thus, he, the moon-being, now ascends to a state of grace, despite his disobedience. From these ruminations, a song was born. I wrote this song, and composed the music for it back in 1994, and recorded it with the Indian version of the group Antigravity (Antigravity is the name of the band begun by my musician-composer-bassist-singer husband, Warren Senders. The American version was formed in the late 1970s, and the Indian one in 1985). Here is that song, which I titled Moon Being:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-oaNk3Tp6M
A long time ago (approximately over two decades), I read The Maze Maker by Michael Ayrton, and was haunted by his deeply moving story of Daedalus, told in the first person. I pictured the distraught father escaping from his Cretan captors, and flying with his son towards freedom over the blue Aegean, and imagining him as a bird over the water, staying the course, risking nothing more than the fact that he was flying. He didn’t fly too high, for fear of melting the wax that held his contraption together, nor did he fly too low, for fear of the sea weighing his feathered wings with moisture and dragging him into the depths. I titled the song that was born from this image Bird Over The Water (I wrote this one in 1990, and recorded it in 1994 with the Indian Antigravity.) Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1KIAGcufVE&spfreload=10
Hope you enjoy my music, songs and singing!
Love,
Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Daedalus, Bird Over The Water, Compositions by Vijaya Sundaram, Greek Mythology references, Icarus, Moon-Being, Original songs by Vijaya Sundaram, Singing by Vijaya Sundaram
Jan 8, 2015 Original Poetry
Playing with My Dog
©January 8th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
It’s water leaping into the air
Catching light and tossing it up.
It’s laughter and growls
And scurrying and skittering
And funny mock-battles.
It’s being willing to shed
Time and dignity
And be utterly free.
It’s letting go of dead weights
Encircling ankles, gripping me
By the neck.
It’s saying, Yes, death waits
But I will simply be
Right here, right now.
This is what it means
To play with my dog.
I will play.
And sing.
I will tug at my dog’s toy
And bring her joy.
I will leap and pirouette
And jump and spin.
For, at the end of the day
After all the news and the din
Of competing stories, voices
People tapping at my head
Waiting to get in,
There is just this:
Time narrowing down:
A living room, a rectangle
Of wood and light,
Colors and music,
And a dog with
Rubber chicken in mouth
Growling happily while I
Tug and pull and play.
And we leap around each other,
All existence sharpened
To this point. None else.
___________________________________________________________________________
Tags: Chronicles of Holly, Fun, Holly, Playing With my Dog
Jan 8, 2015 Original Poetry
Child in Water
© January 8, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
A scream hangs in the air
Long after the deed.
Betrayal and terror
Clip five-year old wings.
Sailing over an edge
Into a void, crying,
“Daddy, I love you!
Save me!”
The heart stops.
Bones hurt with
Unending pain.
Cold enters deep
With fingers of frost
And icy dread.
Eternity is a few long seconds
Cutting off five years,
Choking off a child’s cry.
Eternity is the menacing dark
Rising up to meet you
Like liquid iron.
Eternity is waves, like claws
Closing over a still beating
Child-heart.
And I sit here and weep
At a mere headline,
While there, an entire
Beautiful bird-child
Spinning, spiraling,
Into brick-darkness, has been
Ended.
For her father,
What forgiveness?
None, I say.
May he rot
In the dung-heap
Of time.
May he crawl in
Unending grief.
May the waves of
Remorse rip apart
His beast-heart.
May he never more
Know human love.
Worse, may he
Know it, and never
Find it.
May sorrow tear
Him to shreds
Day after day after day
While his heart
Beats itself into
Nothingness, and he
Spirals, headlong, into
An unending chasm
Beyond death.
__________________________________________________________________
On seeing the headlines: 5-Year-Old Girl Dies After Being Tossed Off Florida Bridge
Tags: Evil Father, Horror, Huffington Post /AP news story about a five year old girl thrown from a bridge
Dec 5, 2014 Original Poetry
Photo-Credit (Unknown, but here’s the source where I got it from:
http://dabacon.org/pontiff/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Reflection_in_a_soap_bubble_edit.jpg
Without End
©December 5, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
A perfect sphere,
Encapsulating house and trees
And trees and house
And blue so intense
It might break but for the violet
Which edges that without edges:
It floats, delicate and
Precise and ready
To disappear.
And it does.
And I mourn its passing,
But rejoice in its brief
Eternity.
Why, then, must I fear
The end of my bubble?
All my troubles
And joys and pain
And loss and gain
And a future which
Must appear
Whether I fear
Or not, will be
Captured in that
One perfect moment,
Until I
Disappear …
As I, too, must.
So, while you mourn my passing
Rejoice in my brief
Eternity, as I shall
Rejoice
In yours.
____________________________________________
Tags: #Death, #Life, #Original Poem by Vijaya Sundaram, bubble, Reflections