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
Jul 3, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Photograph©by Vijaya Sundaram, 2008
Archipelago
©July 3rd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
See that child who stands there near traffic
Dressed in rags, his face a mute plea,
While people walk around him, parting
Like water around a small rock,
A rock that’s slowly being eroded,
By water which never stops or slows,
While traffic flows by him, oil-slicks
In a sluggish sea on a stuporous day;
And that woman, brown-skinned, bright
Smiling, but strained, in a sea of white
Indifferent to her impenetrable loneliness
As she learns the facial tones and gestures
While they don’t comprehend hers,
As she aches to explain, but they
Close their faces to hers, not interested,
As their ships sail by her waving flag;
And that man being handcuffed by police
For standing, not disturbing the peace,
Not resisting, not being violent,
Just standing and waiting, headphones on
On the sidewalk, enjoying a second of
Being free in a supposed democracy,
While fear handcuffs the shoals of passersby
Not wishing to cause ripples in that unsafe water;
See them, and stop everything, everything.
Let’s build a bridge out of Christo-cloth,
So that we may walk freely, buoyantly across
On a hot, hot summer’s day, and transform
From islands to travelers, when we so wish;
So that we may choose to visit, and choose
To be, or not be, an island, so that we shall
Not live handcuffed by fear and indifference.
And, just in case, let us build more boats.
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Tags: #archipelago, #Christo, #Connection, #DailyPrompt, #humanity, #indifference, #Islands, #kindness, #Love, #Metaphorical poem, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost
Jun 11, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Dread and Fatigue
©By Vijaya Sundaram
June 11th, 2013
Two words that sum up what made up much of my past week — and I know it isn’t over yet.
In fact, it won’t be over until I’m dead.
Meanwhile, I have to keep going, pushing on, like a diver plunging into the trenches. And you know what they say, the pressure in those depths can kill you.
Oh yes, there are always moments of joy — many moments, in fact. Moments of pleasure abound (as they do when I’m reading a book, and eating a nice snack, or seeing my daughter bound about happily, or when we watch “Red Dwarf” together, in companionable silliness, or hang out with my funny, but equally tired husband) — so, don’t worry. It’s not depression. Nor is it some treatable thing.
It’s bone-deep. It’s surface-physical, too, but that’s just sleep-deprivation and encroaching age, I suspect.
It’s soul-deep — because I see what the world is doing to its dreamers, its poets, its singers, its healers, its teachers, its truth-tellers — and I am scared for the future of us all.
I see the venality of people in power, and much worse, the greed for power in those who already have it.
When do such people choose to allow their humanity to be smothered? At what point do they say, “That’s it! I’m selling out!” Or: “The hell with everyone else. I want what’s mine!”
Or, more scary still: Did they ever have it?
I see the disrespect that people who know nothing about education show to the teachers in their midst. And when I see this, I want to curse those people to a lifetime of ignorance, and make them suffer for it. However, I cannot. I will not. The teacher in me says, “Teach them.”
That’s what I shall have to do.
And that goes as deep as living itself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #humanity, Living, Students, teach, Teachers and teaching, venality
Apr 9, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Original Poetry, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o8jL1BXMdk]
Response to “Pigeon” by Anthony Green
©Vijaya Sundaram
April 9th, 2013
[The above YouTube video shows the film “Pigeon” by Anthony Green. This was the prompt I put up today on my “smartboard” in class (we have been studying books set in the Nazi-Holocaust period for the past few weeks). Students watched this 11-minute film and then we had a discussion about the significance of the different acts of kindness or unkindness in the film. We also discussed the symbolism in all the visuals (I don’t want to go all school-teacherish on you here), as well as the arresting imagery, acting and directing.
This was followed by a writing assignment. Students had to write a poem-response to this film, telling the story itself, or using the larger symbolism to zoom in on what moved them. They were deeply affected by the film, and the poems they came up with were beautiful.
I told them that I, too, would write while they wrote. So, I managed to write in four out of five of my class periods today.] Here is the first of the four poems I wrote (unedited, sorry, no time to tweak things. Will do that later):
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Shema Yisrael
Response poem to the film “Pigeon”
©Vijaya Sundaram
April 9th, 2013
Shema Yisrael
Stranded on the island
I await my deliverance
Shema Yisrael
Pigeon at my feet
Crumbs for its survival
Shema Yisrael
I have lost all, lost all
My papers, my self, my life.
Shema Yisrael
I try and sidestep my fate
Waiting is my wasteland
Shema Yisrael
Here are guards, inexorable as death
I die by degrees, in a sweat of fear
Shema Yisrael
Angel in human form sees
My loss, transforms into demoness
Shema Yisrael
I had a wife, and now a new one,
Who beats me about the shoulders.
Shema Yisrael
Guards aim death at her, “Papers!”
She mocks me, her “husband.”
Shema Yisrael
They laugh at us, mock me; they see she
“Wears the pants,” and then they leave.
Shema Yisrael
Bless this angel of mercy, this wife
Who delivered me from death, from hell
Shema Yisrael
May her act not go unnoticed
May she find a place among the angels.
Shema Yisrael
May the pigeons and doves among us
Find their saviors, may they fly in peace.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad
(Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One)
Disclaimer: I am not a Jewish person, nor a believer of any sort. However, I believe deeply in the power of prayer to steady ourselves, when we’re cast afloat, rudderless, on an open sea. It’s a centering mechanism. It’s good. It can only calm us, not hurt us.
Tags: #humanity, #kindness, #NaPoWriMo, #Resistance, #Teaching, Deliverance, Goodness, Mercy, poem-response to film "Pigeon" by Anthony Green, Shema
Mar 20, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Food is Good — A Meditation Upon Humanity
©By Vijaya Sundaram
Published on March 20th, 2013
I am always amazed and grateful that there is so much good food in the world, and yet people starve. Soul-crushing tyrannies, rampant capitalism, war, famine, flood, indifference … All of the hatefulness of humans conspire to keep people hungry in so many parts of the world — it’s a matter of intense shame to me.
If you have food, share it.
If you have the time, feed people.
If you have the money to spare, give it to the starving, the weak, the poor.
There is no excuse for indifference.
Don’t moralize piously about how the poor, the weak and the hungry should work for food.
Give them food FIRST!
Try working on an empty stomach — after many days of not eating.
How easy it is for you to prate on and on about how the poor expect handouts! What about you? You got plenty, only it came in the form of unquestioned privilege.
It is as simple as this: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend to the sick, offer love to all living creatures. Leave, don’t take.
You don’t need religion to tell you this–you need what my mother would term “manusha thanmai” — a sense of humanity.
It is this, and only this which will save us all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #humanity, #Ishmael, #Love, Daniel Quinn, Feed the Poor, Food, Gandhian Socialism, Sharing