Aug 2, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Keep Looking
©Tuesday, August 2nd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every strand of my DNA
Takes me further back
And farther
And is woven through
All life around me.
Every strand of my DNA
Shivers when people suffer
And when they kill,
I feel killed, cell by cell.
And every nucleotide in me
Hears every nucleotide in you.
I hear you, and I see you.
What you feel is pain and rage,
And it hurts.
And when you hurt someone,
It hurts.
And when you hurt yourself,
It hurts.
There is a suppurating sore
In the body politic
Logic and empathy die by degrees.
Flawed reasoning struts about.
How shall we heal this?
Look deep within my eyes
I’ll look deep within yours.
Let’s look closely, and see
Who sits inside, crouching
Or strutting, who laughs,
Who cries, who rages.
What do you see?
What do I see?
Let it all seep out, all the
Hatred, rejection, anger, spite
Rage, hurt, sorrow, indifference,
All that rushing, tumbling loneliness,
And, hiding deep in there, a lost
Child, hurting, always hurting, alone,
Deaf and blind in a dark cellar,
Where love comes not,
And fear resides, and grief
Twisted into rage.
Keep looking.
Do not look away.
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Tags: #Connectedness, #DailyPrompt, #humanity, #Love, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #Profound, #TheDailyPost
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.
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Tags: #Connectedness, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, Air and You, and I