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!
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Tags: #Death, Arctic snow, Dying, Memory, Methane
Dec 20, 2014 Teaching and Learning
When one reaches the end of something, and is at the start of something else, a strange thing happens, and it goes like this:
One doesn’t really care (well, not too much) about what people think.
One stops worrying about things.
One is more charitable.
One does not judge too harshly the things one judged before.
One lets go more easily.
One is more loving.
One is more detached.
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Tags: Changing jobs, Dying, letting go, Living, Moving
Sep 22, 2014 Original Poetry
What Words?
©September 22nd, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
What words can we say
When a young person dies,
When anyone dies?
I’m so sorry doesn’t cut it.
Deep sympathies doesn’t, either.
The world rushes by, myopic
And meaningless,
While a mother and a father,
And a sibling or two
Stand, bewildered, static
Amidst a whirl of meaningless
Heartfelt chatter, while
The patter of feet
Come in and out,
And death stands
Eternally by their side,
Silent, spare, sorrowing.
Death comes with quiet foot
Or a skid of tyres
Death comes with a twist of fate
Or the twist of a knife
Death creeps up and stings
Or bites down hard
On a fatal vein.
Death blooms, red and angry
In one’s blood and slashes
Left and right, clearing a
Path only it knows.
Sometimes, there’s pain,
Sometimes, a flash,
Then, nothingness.
So, I imagine it.
What if it isn’t any of these?
What if it’s the eternal squeeze
Of life, oozing out toothpaste-like,
Pain so piercing
There are no words,
Just living it, crying,
Living the dying:
THAT has to be
The apex of agony.
Would dying be easy?
Would I want to go, unresisting?
No! I’d say, give me one more chance
Just one more!
I promise I’ll do it right this time.
And a remorseless Judge
Would say, Yea or Nay.
Of course, that’s if you believe.
What if you don’t?
What would you say, then?
Better to be scattered
Atoms of one’s self
Entering into the inmost
Secrets of existence.
I’d say.
Better to be photons
Better to become
Lighter than air
And ascend.
And descend,
And ascend again
And again, that ladder
From DNA to Death.
To feel is a curse.
Lift that curse,
I want to say, and yet,
I cling to it, for it
Is all I know, for it
Is all that any of us
Will ever know we know.
And so, we say,
I’m so sorry
Because, somewhere, hidden,
Our blood-cells know
About this remorseless
Yet familiar stranger,
Death.
And we grieve
For the living,
For ourselves,
Once the dead
Have fled.
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Tags: #Life, #Loss, DNA, Dying, Living, photons, Words in the face of Death
Mar 29, 2013 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, the surreal and the unreal, Reading, Writing, Thinking
Death, and all that Dark Stuff …
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 29th, 2013
The dead are never really far from us.
I imagine them around me every day.
When I shut my eyes at night, and sink, awake, into the blackness under my eyelids, I feel a momentary sense of terror, as if I’m floating away, unanchored, into space. Then follows a quiet exhilaration. I know sleep will follow, and that’s a lovely, glowing, cushiony thought.
I wonder whether the dead feel this way upon dying. Do they float around in inky blackness, wondering when they’ll awake, but knowing they never will, and so, they burrow under our subconscious and visit us in our dreams, just to feel at home, if only for a night?
Or, do the dead just drift away?
Can we accept the word of those who’ve “come back” just because they came back? How do they know what happens after? They’ve come back, haven’t they? So, they didn’t venture that far.
If only one could write after death. I would love that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~That’s all, folks!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~