May 30, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Photograph©Vijaya Sundaram, 2016
Blanketed
©May 30th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Solitary cloud in an empty sky
Empties itself of air
Arbitrary crowd that an empty eye
Empties itself to stare.
Blank is the mind that stares up high
Looking to find a thought
Rank is the mind that looks down low
Looking to blind a spot
Look straight ahead, not up or down
And make yourself quite still
Don’t seek to find, just speak a mind
Whose blankness will not spill.
Blanketed in perfect peace,
You’ll sit in ease and find release!
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In response to The Daily Post's Daily Prompt: Blank
Tags: #Blank, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 29, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Orderly
©May 29th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am not.
I wish I were.
I gaze, longingly
At the ladies I know
Who arrange and re-arrange
And I, stumbling around, deranged
Because neatness and I are at war,
Rail against the disorder around me,
Try all that arranging and re-arranging,
And feel trapped underneath the burden of it all
For chaos primeval rules my world eternally,
And all I can do is pull up the weeds as they spring up,
So my flowers and ferns and trees can rise up to meet the sky.
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In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Orderly
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Orderly, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 28, 2016 Ramblings and Musings, The Daily Post
An Unepigrammatical Diatribe
©May 28th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am unwilling to write a post about “epitome,” because I am the very picture, the very embodiment, the very incarnation of utter lassitude, laziness, mulishness and intractability.
I lie around, the personification of sheer inertia, and view the word “epitome,” with a languid contempt.
Why should I cut short my long day of torpor, with the sun vanquishing my every attempt to be active, in order to wax eloquent about the word? Being the very picture of apathy at the moment, I do not wish to relinquish my role as the paradigm of inaction.
Therefore, I say, and I shall say it till the end of … well, this post, that I shall not elaborate further, in some sort of academic nose-in-the air-kind-of-way, on the topic of “epitome.”
An epitome cuts short my attempts to write epics.
I shall not provide any examples of it. Pooh to the word, I say, pooh!
Goodnight, Gentle Reader!
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Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Epitome
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Diatribe, #Epitome, #Irony, #TheDailyPost, #Tongue-in-cheek
May 27, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Forking Metaphors!
©May 27th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The temptation to make
A metaphor that is profound
Seizes me when I see a fork.
How irritating!
I shall deny this urge,
And prevent its expression.
I shall avoid all forks
That beset me when I
Travel the byways of my life.
I shall not fork over
Any money to those who make
Any bets about my using
Or not using a metaphor
With a fork in it.
I shall spoon my yogurt,
And forks be damned!
I shall spear my food
With a toothpick,
And garden with only
Shovels and trowels –
No pitchforks.
I won’t say forking hell!
No! Nor, shall I ever say
“I reached a fork in the road.”
All I need is to take this
Stupid metal implement
And stick it in some cake.
See?
I’m done!
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In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Fork
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #fork, #metaphors, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 27, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post, Uncategorized
Carping about Carpe Diem (Countless)
(Or, A Whinging about Procrastination and Ennui)
©May 27th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Countless hours go by
And countless days slog along
And countless minutes flow by
And countless seconds jog along.
And still, I don’t seize them!
If I did, I’d have to release them,
And I hate holding time hostage,
Hate letting go of them, condemned
To fritter away the countless hours –
The hours of life after life that I live,
Repeating myself, cell by tired cell
Recreating it all, so boring, so tedious!
Waiting for an end to all this unaccountable
Counting of the minutes the hours, the days,
The years, the millennia of what passes
For this life, when it could be done with
One stroke
Of the pen,
Or one slit
Of the pen-knife!
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P.S. Please don’t be alarmed. This was just a post, nothing more.
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Countless
Tags: #Countless, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 24, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
The Nightbird Sings (Passing Phase)
©May 24, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The night bird sings a lonely song.
For she awaits one who
Is passing through.
It’s a passing phase, this
Like all the rest of them.
This despair, this elation
This sunny day, this cloudy one,
This happiness at seeing loved ones arrive
This sadness at seeing them leave.
When the time comes to die,
All this will be the memory of a dream.
It’s a passing phase, this
Like all the rest of them.
All that springing, leaping joy
In her blood in her youth
All that intense passion
In his bones, occluding thought.
When the time comes to die,
All this will be the memory of a dream.
So much rage comes and slashes away
At good sense, so much despair
So much anger and sorrow.
So much unhinged emotion drives
Away wholeness, and makes up
The stuff of songs and stories.
The girl who cries into her pillow
And wishes she were dead
The boy who stares self-hatred in the face
And courts Death.
The children who seek the love
Of those around them, and find none.
The women who look for their
Prince, who is off looking
Elsewhere for his true love, while he
Slays imaginary dragons.
The men who seek greatness
And mistake achievement for it.
The women who follow their Muse
And find it hiding in distant lands –
All these will pass through
A doorway into one phase, and enter
A space to be filled, a phase
To round into, to curve out of.
If I could ask for one wish, it is this:
Let me pass away brightly,
Singing under my breath,
Whispering a poem,
Holding my loved one’s hand
At the height of peace
And fulfillment, knowing
All whom I love are safe, and will
Go on, through all the phases
Of their lives, waxing and waning in quiet.
Let them find the same peace I desire,
While the moon waxes and fills
The air with cool silver, and an unseen
Night bird sings her last song.
But if I do die as the moon wanes,
Let me fill the air with my own silver
And radiate with my open arms
An entire universe. Let me in my
Final, dying phase, find my blackbird
While she sings in the dying night,
So I can soar away on her wings
And never return.
For the night bird sings a lonely song.
And she awaits one who
Is passing through.
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Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Phase
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #phases, #TheDailyPost
May 24, 2016 Original Flash Fiction, Original Short Story, The Daily Post
Dream-Song
©May 23rd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Out of the dust rose Dream.
And Dream held in her palm a flower of darkness, gathering her raiment of chaos around her body. She stood tall and black, full of stars in her pockets, and full of inchoate longing, for she was all alone, and loneliness wasn’t yet born.
She looked around her, saw no one, and yearned blindly for that which had no name.
A song arose in her, full of hunger for someone to hear her.
And Dream sang a song that wound around all the worlds there were and the worlds to come, her song a whispering thread of shining silver that edged the darkness, to light the way for Someone.
Her song held stories that stirred in many minds, stories of things to be, stories of love and death, and suffering and peace.
One day, her song came whispering into the mind of a man who had no eyes to see with. He spent his days begging on the streets, singing a tuneless song about loss and loneliness. Out of pity, people fed him, and clothed him, but they would have no more to do with him, for they feared his misery and his loneliness, for these clung to him like a shadow.
Into this mind, Dream blew her song, and into his lap, she dropped the flower of darkness, and the man who was lonely now knew he had found someone.
And Dream wound lovingly into his world and brought him the gift of seeing into, and beyond, what was there, so that when the blind man lay down at night on the wretched sidewalk where he spent his days begging, he saw stars and a sky that went all the way into him.
And his song changed.
He sang of the beauty of life, of the beauty of love, of his companion whom no one could see. He sang of stars and sky, of the universe and of friendship. He sang like one possessed, and now the people reviled him, saying, “Surely he must be mad, for he sings of things that he cannot see, nor know nothing of.” And they beat him about the head and shoulders, even as he sang.
He cried out at first, but they didn’t hear, so loud was the clamour around him. He sang louder and louder. They berated him loudly and beat him some more. He sang louder still, with broken and bleeding voice, about mercy.
Now, tired of beating him, the people went away, saying, “He is possessed of the devil. See how he sings about that which he cannot know!” They cautioned children to stay away from him, when some, touched by his song, and moved by his plight, tried to go close and listen.
Nobody fed him any more, for they were afraid of the blind man with his unending song. And now, they felt a darkness closing in on all of them.
Bloody and crazed, the blind man sang in sun and darkness, in rain and wind for seven days and seven nights. Now, his song changed, and he sang of blood and war, and spite and hatred.
Dream watched from afar. And she suffered, because she knew what he was becoming, and why. She had no way to stop him, and her heart was sore. For, she had sung to him, and caused him to sing.
On the seventh night, the man died.
The people of the city caused his body to be thrown far from the city gates for the vultures to feast on. They were afraid, and did not know why.
And Dream watched, with quickening breath.
Suddenly, there was movement beside her. She turned, and caught her breath. For there, in front of her, arrayed in gold and red, bigger than the worlds she saw, stood the blind man whom she had driven mad. With smoky eyes, he smiled at her, and held out his hand. She stepped back.
“You came to me,” he said, and his voice was soft. “You sang to me. I am yours.”
“What do you call yourself?” asked Dream.
“Ah, but surely you know the answer to that!” smiled the Man.
And she did.
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Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Dream
Tags: #AllegoricalFiction, #DailyPrompt, #Dream, #OriginalShortStory, #TheDailyPost
May 23, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Saga
© May 22nd (into the 23rd) 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
It’s always about a quest, isn’t it?
Or a question that begs an answer.
Taking us through lives and lifetimes
And battles and romances, fought and won.
It’s about rings and magic and dreams
From which beasts and dragons emerge
And are transformed or slain.
It’s about honor redeemed,
Valour proven, hearts knits
Or torn asunder by time and space.
We want a saga,
We proclaim loudly,
We clamour for one.
We cannot have enough stories,
What about the story of one who left
Her native country to come far away
With the one she loved, only to find
His oaths of fealty were naught but air?
What did she do? Do you want to know?
Or one, who having come so far
Finds there are a finite number
Of heartbeats left, and she needs
Strength to carry on for her children.
Did her saga carry her through lifetimes,
Between the verdict and the acceptance of it?
What of the friends who pledge their help?
What about he, who upon coming home,
Finds a note saying goodbye
And finds there is no grief, just
A hollow space which had been
Emptying slowly over time?
Will his story continue, or does it end in sorrow?
And what about the parent dying
Unseen, unloved, undesired
All alone in a vast, echoing house,
Where his beloved spouse died,
And he cannot hear himself think
So he talks to the air around him,
Which seems to listen, pressing close,
Like his wife’s body on the bed?
What about the dog, who, abandoned
By his owners, finds an old ruin,
Makes a home, and awaits his slow
Descent into death from disease and starvation,
Only to be found by those who care,
And those whose hearts bind them to
All living, suffering creatures, and who
Build a living being out of the dust?
They deserve no less a name,
For they tell a vast story
Sometimes of love and loss,
Sometimes of death and betrayal,
Sometimes of bad luck,
Sometimes of courage and endurance,
Always the story of finding something,
Someone who will capture their story.
Listen to their stories,
And drink deep of the well
Of their understanding.
Listen well, and fill your cup.
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In response to The Daily Post’ Daily Prompt: Saga
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Saga, #TheDailyPost
May 21, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Sing, O Muse!
©May 21st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Sing to me, O Muse!
Sing of children who play at war
And warriors who play at war
Only there’s no death in one,
And death in the other.
Sing to me, O Muse!
Sing of those who capture and kill
Who accuse the innocent,
Who feed the prisons more fodder
Of the darker-skinned kind,
Of the poor who are chased off
Parks and sidewalks for being poor,
Of the immigrant who leaves her land
Or his, for better shores, only to find
Horror upon humiliation forced
Upon them, being reviled for
All that they do to benefit
The fat, the wealthy, the self-satisfied.
Sing to me, O Muse!
Sing of wanderers far from home
Seeking wife and child, or children
Prisoners not of the Cyclops, of Circe, of Calypso,
But of bloodthirsty Ares in unseen prisons,
Operated in secret by men who hide behind acronyms
Who have power of the lives and deaths of
Others, who happened to stray unwittingly
Into their orbit;
Who serve Belial and Moloch, Azrael and Alastor;
Who take refuge in what they call the law;
Who get off on torture and force-feeding the helpless;
Who get off on waterboarding them;
Who get off on the agony of the damned;
Who maim and cripple their own minds,
While maiming and crippling others’ bodies.
How shall I sing of these?
Sing to me, O Muse!
Sing of those who kill the outspoken
The brave, the bold, who, in pursuit of the truth
Run afoul of those who pursue lies.
Sing of the good, the selfless, the kind,
Those who give of themselves
Who save the wretched, who clothe the poor,
And feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless
Who deal in mercy and goodness
And give willingly of themselves
To those who have need of them.
Tell me how goodness can prevail
When so much evil flourishes?
And how shall I sing of them?
Sing to me, O Muse!
Sing of children who die starving
While the rich feed on riches, and throw away excess
Sing of women who search for grains of rice
Who search for a drop of water,
While the wine-dark sea around their land
Gets hotter and hotter, as the waters rise,
Whose bodies are ravaged and defiled
By the demons who are born of war,
Whose homes are hollowed out
By those who mine the mountains for that which
Makes us all text each other faster,
About whether we’ll meet each other
And where, while rosy-fingered Dawn
Lights those lands where the rivers run red.
Sing to me, and tell me how
All of this came to be,
And who suffered this
To come to be.
And if you do, how shall I sing of this,
Save with fast-beating heart
And rage and sorrow?
Sing to me, O Muse, and teach me
How to sing of this, and not court grief
Grief unending, grief overpowering,
Grief that threatens a vision of joy.
Teach me to sing of this, and still
Sing of fruit, and flowers, and summer skies
Of children, and laughter and love,
And animals who live simply, and birds and bees,
And trees that gift us the breath of life,
Of songs to come, and worlds to be.
For sing I must, of these things and those,
Sing I must of the dark and the light,
For without a vision of joy,
All is lost, all is forsaken.
Without flowers and children and happiness,
And budding trees and butterflies and laughter,
We shall live and die, revolving
In awful darkness, without dreams
Without love, without breath, without joy,
Without friendship, without stories,
Sans everything, dissolving into dust
After a lifetime of nothingness.
So sing, and teach me to sing
Of what I must do, of what we must do
To make all of this vanish,
As we contemplate the sunlight
And the golden honey of our happier days,
As one half of the world reels about,
Dying by degrees in the descending darkness
Of a hell on earth beyond all imagining –
So that we can seek, and find,
A truer Peace, that Land which is ours
By right, and shall become ours again.
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In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Sing
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #HomericReference, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Sing, #TheDailyPost
May 18, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
South-Bound
©May 18th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The land pulses with heat
And moist air, pregnant and brooding
With malligai and bougainvillaea
And chanpakam and rojapu.
The pure and sinful scent of chandanam
The heady perfume of ylang-ylang
The fragrance of Madras coffee
The aroma of steamed idli with sambhar,
And upma and paper-crisp dosai-chutney
All blend with memories of temple-bells
And camphor-scented rituals before the
Incense-intoxicated household gods.
Where girls go to school in two-plaited
Goody-goody-ness, speaking primly
To each other on buses that lurch on,
While they stand in starched
School-dresses, carrying bulging
Satchels on thin shoulders,
And gaze stiffly forward, despite
Suggestive remarks and frank stares
From shiftless and shameless louts;
Where dabba-wallahs carry tiffins
To and from school and workplaces and homes,
In muscle-melting heat, on sturdy bicycles,
Secure in their role as food-carriers,
Doing no harm, doing much good;
Where the emaciated mendicant,
Bent-backed and black from the sun
Comes to the door of house after house
Singing, “Bhavathii Bhiksham dehi,”
And the lady of the house approaches,
Tips a bowl of uncooked rice into his brass pot,
While her child watches from the door
Heart beating fast for the barefoot beggar,
Whom one must never turn away empty-handed,
Because all who come for food
Are from the Divine, and may not be refused;
Where temple bells ring on Holy Days,
And the chanting of fat Brahmin vadiyars
Weaves a moody spell in the mid-morning heat
That mingles with the radiant burst of marigolds
Forming garlands for the gods, or priests,
While starving men and dogs sit outside the gates
Some waiting, others rooting through trash;
Where puritannical prudery persists
And the tyranny of tradition holds sway,
Where rules are made, and followed blindly,
Unquestioningly, and no sense emerges
Save that one must uphold tradition;
Where kindness saves, and community
Knits lost people together during floods;
Where dancers, musicians, thinkers
Create new worlds, rich with art;
Where technogeeks leave in droves
To find more sympathetic stomping grounds;
Where curd rice and pickles are enough
To keep body and soul together
In searing heat, and grinding poverty;
Where the sun beats down without mercy
And the rains slash down without ceasing,
Where the Bay and the Ocean
Drum incessantly against the land,
And the sun floods the waves in the early morn,
Strewing leaves of gold that skitter
Across the troughs and swells –
– This was the land of my youth. –
Where do you come from?
They asked, when I moved a few states Northward.
I answered, simply, “The South.”
And they said, Ah yes, I thought so.
Where do you come from?
They asked, when I moved across the ocean.
And I answered, “From India.”
But it is the South which beats in my body
Like a drum or a pulse.
And I shall return some day,
Unless the sea claims it first.
And if the sea does claim it,
I shall transform into a South Indian mermaid,
And swim home to the land under the sea.
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In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: South
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #South, #SouthIndianReferences, #TheDailyPost