Apr 2, 2017 Uncategorized
A Recipe for Creative Endeavor
©April 2nd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am hopeless at recipes
I don’t understand the lingo
I hate being confined
By tight measurements.
So, I shall write this
With a recipe in mind
Which I shall not follow.
Take your dull despair,
Pluck it from the thing close by,
Squish the little purple globes
Into a nice, quivering jelly.
Stick a finger in it
And taste the purple of it.
Is it not delicious,
And terribly sad?
Add a dash of dashed hopes
A splash of laughter
Sugar it over with dreams deferred,
Add a pinch of naïveté.
Mix and mix, till your brain grows
Tired of repetition, then set aside
To cool and set for a few days, maybe years.
Go to sleep, clear things up within.
Sleep will crystallize everything.
Wake up, perhaps refreshed,
Perhaps, even duller
Than when you went to bed.
If your dreams were full of color
Mix in those, as well,
If they flowed like molasses
Scoop up a bit, add that to it.
Pick out an A minor chord
On your Ibanez. Pluck the notes
Till they fall, ripe and fat
Into your waiting hands.
Chop the notes up into irregular
Cubes, with roots and fifths,
And toss them into the mix.
Crumble some sharp ginger
(All those “constructive criticisms,”
You hated to have pointed out,
But you knew were good for you.)
Crystallized with the sugar of
Someone’s love for you,
Hence the words which stung,
But wrung from you your
Best self.
Bitter chocolate is nice,
But sweet is nicer,
So dark goes in with milk,
Nothing that is sweet
Is without some bitterness
Like a sombre note sounding
A warning:
Do not be too complacent.
Sit back, fold your arms
See what arises.
Things that rise from pain
Can sometimes turn out
Pleasure-filled, succulent,
Luscious, dense with riches.
And sometimes, they collapse,
If they do, forget about
What you’re making.
It wasn’t that necessary,
After all.
_____________________________________________________________
Today is Day 2 of NaPoWriMo 2017, and the prompt was to write a “recipe poem.” I found it hard.
Mar 29, 2017 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Not Here
©March 29th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every ghost leaves behind a sigh
A song, a rustling leaf, a cry,
Muffled, indistinct.
Although we walk but once this way
And leave, each day gives way to day,
Bearing imprints, linked
.
Call it our dust, our joys, our pain,
We fall into lust, destroy, gain;
The world is remade.
Now, as twilight shadows gather
I wish to fade away rather
Than stay, be replayed.
No promise of a better life
Or a worse one sustains me. Knife
This darkening moment.
Forget I ever lived, forget
What I had to give, no regret
Equals atonement.
__________________________________________________________
Feb 28, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Keep Walking
©February 28th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Legs keep moving, in and out,
On and on, feet touching pavement,
Feet in air, feet touching down.
Resist cessation.
Birds sing in confused pleasure
Trees wear catkins like gloves,
Soft-fingered and fuzzy,
And bulbs poke out
Look around in anticipation,
Unsure of life, compelled to grow.
The sun rides hard,
His horses neigh loudly,
And buck and trample clouds
As they propel themselves
Chaotically, confusedly, hotly
Towards yawning darkness,
Resist! I call out to them.
Keep walking, keep walking.
Sing as you walk, loudly, loudly
Let the darkness know you approach.
Let it cower when you arrive.
Sing into its yawn,
Pour loud joy into its chasm,
Until it dissolves, stupefied,
Chastened, ephemeral.
Resist!
_______________________________________
Tags: #Approachingearlyspringinwinter, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #resist
Feb 26, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Orpheus (and I)
©February 26th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every day, the idea of oblivion
Entices, lures, coaxes me ever closer.
I resist, then press on towards it.
And I resist again.
There is a river whose name
I forget, remembering pain, and forget.
Once, I crossed over, and returned
How, I know not. Yet, it calls.
Now, I play my music, but it’s
The ghost of someone who plays:
The ghost of a beloved memory
Who lets her fingers
Stray dreamily over the lyre.
The stones speak.
The woods stir.
Animals gather round.
They come closer and closer.
I do not greet them.
They sit in silence around me.
They bring some solace.
Sunlight plays over my head
Like the fingers of my beloved
I see strings stretched across it.
I play it, and rain falls, flowing
Over my cheeks, like the river
Of forgetting, bleak, cold.
See over there?
Somewhere beyond those hills,
Women beckon, red-eyed, long-nailed,
Wild-haired, naked, wine-stained,
And manic, ready to wreck my life.
They fill me with terror,
Yet, I’m strangely drawn to them
As if an error of blood, of rage
Connects me to them, an error of fate.
Someone long ago, from the future
Said to me, “Avoid them.”
I forget who it was,
A poet, I think.
She treasured my music.
She wept over my lost love.
She wrote about my sorrow.
And she said, “Stay here.
These woods, these animals
Will love you and protect you.
Play your music for them.”
I do not listen to her words.
She was born of my mind, a mere
Figment, a fragment of a future
That didn’t exist, because it hadn’t
Come into being, because I
Didn’t sing of it, because I
Couldn’t picture it, because I
Abhorred the future, because i
Loathed the present, because I
Wanted to live and die in the past.
I leave that place, weeping
For my lost love.
The trees weep with me, and animals
Follow, forlorn, seeking comfort
From one who is bereft of it.
The hills call.
Maenads beckon.
I am come to meet
A fate I cannot fathom.
A seek an end to this.
I seek my beloved.
I hear her call, even
As I am torn.
_________________________________________
Tags: #GreekMythology, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Orpheus
Jan 19, 2017 Uncategorized
Still Life With Stegosaurus and Bird
©January 19th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
An impossibility sits before me
A yellow bird perched on the head
Of a bemused and patient stegosaurus
Carrying a tall green candle.
I would like to shed light upon this matter
But I’d only scatter confusion
The stego’s eyes, red and determined,
Stare straight ahead, intent on
A journey that will never end.
(No one mentioned meteorites to him.)
The bird sings silently of the future,
One in which she will exist,
But not the stegosaurus.
(The bird wisely keeps her counsel.)
I catch her glance,
and put my finger to my lips.
We do not look at each other again.
I rise, turn out the light,
Proceed to bed, quiet as the night.
For now, they’re both safe.
_____________________________________________________
Tags: #BirdandStegosaurusandCandle, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 14, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Soft
©January 14th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Food makes our eyes soft.
We hunger while we wait for it
Or we cook, and are sated.
And the food, steaming hot,
Made with love and care,
Full of richness
Brings an upwelling of gratitude
And makes our eyes soft.
And tempers are mollified
And stomachs sated,
And work happens,
And projects met,
All because food, ready and rich,
And made with love and care,
Comes to us, at our table,
And makes our eyes soft.
So it was when I nursed my babe
And she looked with her milk-bright face,
(Two-and-a-half months old, she was),
And smiled up at me, blurry-eyed,
Like a watery painting come to life,
And I smiled down at her,
At her silken and cloud-like
Presence, in the circlet of my arms
Her gaze seemed to say, Thank you.
Her eyes were soft.
So it is when I cook for my dog –
Fragrant, buttery rice and vegetables,
Or omelette with a side of yoghurt –
Her face looks misty as she awaits food.
See how she stands, patient and alert,
Tail at half-mast, full of the knowledge
That food, her much-awaited food
Will tip into a bowl, all for her.
And now she bends to eat.
When she looks up at me
Her eyes are soft.
This is love, and this is gratefulness
When I see you, and you, and you,
I am satiated, and am glad
And a hunger I never knew existed
Is appeased and eased, and a softness
Settles upon my aching self.
I am full with the love of you,
And am grateful for this richness.
And when I gaze upon you, and you, and you
My eyes feel soft.
___________________________________________________________
Tags: #FoodandLove, #FoodPoem, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Satiation
Jan 12, 2017 Free Verse, Uncategorized
Empty Shell
©January 12th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am empty inside,
Hollowed out, a seashell,
Washed up on a foreign shore.
A memory of the ocean,
Sighs through these hard walls
And the tunnels hold fast
To the sound of her
Even if I have left this shell,
Gasping on the sands.
Like a dream or a story,
Told to the wind by
A tired watcher on the beach,
As the moon rises,
And life sets, I am set upon,
Devoured by life.
What I was once is no more.
What I shall be is an echo.
Today, the sea sighs
Like the memory of a myth
Through these vacant chambers.
_________________________________________
Tags: #emptiness, #hollow, #shell
Jan 10, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Wake, Awake
©January 10th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
When the day narrows to a point,
And blue-white night expands,
I bob, laughingly in the wake
Of all I intended to do,
Holding tightly on to the
Silken, translucent thread
That keeps me above water,
The thread spooling before me,
While I, skidding lightly
Behind it, grow giddy with
Uncertain, heady anticipation
Of all that I plan to do
First thing
Tomorrow.
____________________________________________
Tags: #Being Awake, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Procrastination, #Wake
Jan 9, 2017 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
To My Daughter, On Her Birthday
©January 9th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Can it be that the entire known universe
Arises from a single, careening meeting
Of brooding star-egg and speeding star-sperm?
What sperm travels millions of miles
Full of urgent need, driven through nothingness,
While the warm, dreaming egg awaits?
And when they meet and mate,
What pleasure occurs, and what pain, and what
Amorphous thoughts gather and morph?
And what enormous soundless clashes
Create crackling cradles for stars and comets,
As they make great swoops through space?
And what forces all that void to expand
Endlessly, pushing outward, breaking off
Making stars, making room for planets?
And what fills all that room, in vain
Trying to defeat that yawning void
That looms always, a dark presence?
And what laughter echoes around that void
As we stumble into being, look around, love,
Light candles along the way to our end?
And how did you come to be,
A minuscule embryonic presence
Heavy like a gulp of self inside me?
And how did you emerge, whole, from this,
My body, and grow so tall, so sweet,
So full of song, so full of acceptance?
Twelve years flowing backwards endlessly
To that singular moment when you emerged,
I heard the sound of light pulled into air.
________________________________________________________
Tags: #Birthday Poem, #Metaphorical poem, #Mother and Daughter, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 8, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Impermanence
©January 8th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
So, it snowed yesterday, and winter came in
Furred and booted, and full of fierce winds
Within, pizza baked, and root vegetables roasted.
We watched from within the warmth
Of home, cluttered and messy and bright
As the snow drifted endlessly down, dream-like, dusty.
Now, Holly leaps in a field of white
And returns, with snow-hardened spaces
Between the pads of her paws.
Patiently, she stands, as I bend down,
Excavate each glob of tight-packed snow,
And rub her cold, cold pads.
Her nose is white, too, snow-encrusted
And her eyes look bright and puppy-ish
As she awaits the end of my ministrations.
The backyard is a small wilderness now
And the first reluctance to step outside
Melts away with the powdery essence of winter.
Blue-white shadows vie with sunlight
As the day lengthens into afternoon, but for now
Blue skies spill down light and lack of warmth.
Cold winter gives way to warm days, then
Returns, like a revolving door,
Slamming me in the face.
Every moment of my life goes by thus
Captured like icicles that glitter in daylight
Permanent in the moment.
____________________________________________________________
Tags: #dog and snow, #impermanence, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #Winter