Oct 7, 2019 Uncategorized

Oct 6, 2019 Uncategorized

Light trapped in crystalline form
Hanging from my window
Scatters my attention.

I climb inside teardrop-shaped
Pendalogues, and bind myself
To their empty spaces.I could do this forever, while
Ignoring the piled-up dishes awaiting
My mindless ministrations;

The piled-up papers awaiting my
Critical and loving pen;
The coiled-up impatience of the dog
Awaiting my loving attention.

Practical matters take up room
In a dreaming mind, pierce,
And scatter focus
In multi-directional prisms,
And I would that I could
Drop everything, daring
The universe to throw anything
My way, knowing I could toss it back.
It’d be a game of catch.
And no one would lose.

I wish I could go under
The surface of things,
Go through the inner and outer layers
From one plane to another,
And breathe, gill-breathe,
All that lies within, and without,
And which would otherwise drown me.
Gill-breathe, and swim upwards
In an entirely different direction,
Far from all I know.

I long for gills in a dry world.
____________________________________

Sep 7, 2019 Uncategorized

Aug 25, 2019 Uncategorized

Finding
©August 25th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram

It’s a balance
But the tilt of it,
And the back and forth of it
Is tedious.
It’s easy to wish to be done.
But a little thought presses
A finger on the middle of the scale:
Why wish to be done when
There’s so much left to do?
Forget about feelings – the ego
Is a tedious burden.
There’s a lot outside one’s self –
Just look!
See the purpose of all creatures
Walking, or flying, or scurrying, or creeping.
So much life and death there,
Who cares about wounded feelings
When there are other wounds more pressing,
Like the loss of nest, or home,
Or parents, or children,
Or food, or warmth,
Or air, and water and soil, and trees,
An entire planet?
So, stop with the wounded feelings,
And forgive all slights, intended or not,
People are knots within knots,
Let them untie themselves,
Disentangle your own,
And go observe a tree
Simply living,
Simply breathing,
Simply growing,
A place of shelter,
A place of calm roots.
Find yours.
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Aug 23, 2019 Uncategorized

Rabbit Dreams
©August 23rd, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram

A rabbit, cool as a –
Stands in our yard, bold as –
And looks at me blank as –
I look back, mad as a –
(For it’s eating my yard)
Then laugh like a –
Because, I’m a figment of its –
Or maybe, it’s a pigment of mine.

My dog disagrees, and voices
Her loud opinion of this interloper
Who lopes, then hops into grass, and
Disappears, while the air stitches itself back
To seal the breach.

I find I don’t mind, not much.
I like this rabbit,
Its calm acceptance of its green wealth.
I wish for my life to be thus.
A flash in the grass,
Green dreaming, then a quick
Disappearance, with voice of my dog to carry me
Across a divide.
—————————-

Aug 22, 2019 Uncategorized

Here’s the Thing
©August 22nd, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram

Here’s the thing about children
In detention centers, abandoned,
Sick, dying, separated
From all that is good:

One cannot make poetry from it.
One cannot make art from it.
One cannot make anything from it.
For, it is unimaginable.

It is an offense against humanity.
It makes all other emotion hollow.
It makes it hard to live
A life that holds meaning.

All joys and sadnesses become muted
When set against it.
And yet, we struggle on,
Stupid, stupefied, stunned by it all,
Still laugh, still eat and drink,
Still find pleasure in daily things.

For, if only sorrow and horror define us,
What’s left?
So, we make music and art, and we sing,
Even when our voices crack,
And other cracks form within.
Dual consciousness is the new burden
All of us carry, as we try and carve out
A different vision for all people,
Perhaps, a different life.
And work in what ways we can
To tilt the balance a little in favor of humanity.

And if the horror we see doesn’t kill us,
The work we do might just save us all.
_________________________________________

Aug 22, 2019 Uncategorized

A Response to a Play I Disliked
©August 22nd, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram

If fiction within fiction within fiction
Stretches its arms towards Truth,
And finds that *that* is a fiction,
What’s left?

Chains, maybe?
Paper chains, waiting to be ripped.
A trudge through weary tropes,
Paper flames and cartoon parents,
An emotion too tired to be sadness,
A history too tenuous to grasp.

And I struggle to reach empathy
Even I struggle against it,
As an outside force pushes me
Violently and laughingly towards it.

I stand still, and dig my heels in,
Examine the landscape,
Swallow my ire,
And turn around.

Open the gates of ivory,
I wish to pass back out through them,
For I seek the gates of horn.
____________________________________________

Aug 20, 2019 Uncategorized

My Body
©August 20th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram

A body is a curious thing to possess.
I am conscious of mine as a friend
With her own blind needs,
Her own mute sorrows, her loud joys,
Her love of some fragrances, and loathing of certain smells,
Her ears that welcome all music,
Her eyes that see beyond facades
But forget to see the facade itself.
She is the entity who shares my other consciousness.
When she is out of sorts,
But *I’m* sanguine, we confuse each other,
And sometimes it’s the other way around,
But mostly, we keep peace between us.
She keeps track of time,
So that even when I’m not near a clock,
She lets me know.
When I am hurt, she forces me to shut down my other self,
And attend to her.
This is as it should be.
She has given me space to live within her
And I love her and thank her for giving me room.
She is a map of my journeys,
And the road on which the journeys took place,
And her imperfections, so many, fill me
With quiet affection.
She has shed her skin so many times, and donned new ones,
And her hands, all veined, have held this earth and other hands
With love and trust, ready to give,
Even when she lost, sometimes.
Yes, she has failed me sometimes,
But then, I failed her even more,
But mostly, we are at peace.
I shall miss her when she dies.
I do not think she’ll remember to miss me
At the time of her passing.
—————————

Aug 9, 2019 Uncategorized

Today, With An Old Friend
©August 9th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram

Met an old friend, and true;
Saw art that spoke of light and shadow,
Of line and white space and tone and colour,
Art that flooded the mind
With reflections of reflections,
Like glass reflecting glass
In mirrors and rivers.
A walk in a park with a volcanic-red walkway
Lined with trees that drank damp air,
As we spoke of this and that.

Later, a visit with neighbors,
With family, exchanging pleasantries,
Being pious on a day dedicated to the Goddess.
This was today.
It seemed right and good,
After days of rain and staying home.

The purpose of living
Is to love, but even more,
The purpose of living
Is to build layer after layer
Of memory, like glass upon glass, upon glass,
So that when the end nears,
We can plunge right through all those layers of glass
Into a place beneath and beyond, a lake, perhaps,
Layered with images of your life –
Till, going downwards through Time,
You see a space that’s waiting for you.
All yours.
Singular, saturated, empty,
A white space,
With no colours,
And all colours,
Holding no memories,
Holding every memory,
Where you sit, eyes closed,
And dissolve into sand,
While the glass melts over you,
Drop by drop, and you find that you scatter and spread out,
As you are translated into a seashore,
Even as you arise, luminous with the numinosum,
Fully formed from the sea.
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Aug 8, 2019 Uncategorized