Apr 19, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Fake
Fake-itude!
©April 19th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
How lovely to see you!
You don’t look a day older
(Despite the wrinkles, that is).
Such gorgeous ladies!
Fabulous beauties, all of you!
(Fabulous is for fifty-year olds!)
Oh, we must meet again, soon!
Where’d you get that dress?
It’s beautiful! So … colorful!
(I must make a note of it,
So I can avoid it.)
Call me, okay?
It’s been too long!
Will do, surely!
We have to get together!
I’ll call you, okay?
(In your dreams!)
You’re the best!
Isn’t she amazing?
She’s so talented,
So accomplished!
(So full of herself –
Wish she’d stop showing off!)
Hey man, you’ll be missed.
The place won’t be the same.
Let’s have coffee sometime.
Yes, sometime.
(In the next century!)
Let’s play some music sometime
Hang out, chill, you know?
Imbibe some, shoot the breeze,
Like the old days, man!
Sure, man! I’ll call you.
It’ll be like old times.
And how are you doing today, Miss?
(Like I care – wish you’d all go away!)
What’ll it be? Mochaccino? With skim?
Perfect! Nice choice, if I may say so.
No way? Chai with soy?
My favorite – you’ve got good taste!!
(If I taste it, I’ll puke –
These millennials are weird!)
Have a lovely day!
(And leave me alone!)
Thank you so much!
I wonder where you come from
India? How wonderful!
(I hope you’ll go back there –
Stupid people taking over our jobs
Make Amewica gweat again!)
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P.S. I don’t love this poem, but I was hard-pressed to write about fake things. It’s okay if you hate it. Just don’t fake it! 🙂
Tags: #Fake, #Humor, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #sarcastic poem, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt
Mar 17, 2016 Daily Life, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Shelf
On one of the bookshelves in my study / work-space (made of mahogany by my amazing husband) are the following:
- A metal bird hanging on the side of it
- Some dust on the very top, along with:
A tone drum, very beautifully carved
A pair of clay and goatskin bongos from Turkey (I think)
A handmade (by my husband) Kora
A fish scraper (percussion, that is)
An Asante (or Ashanti) kete bell for kids - Books by women
- Books by men
- Books on language
- Books on education
- Some Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Isabel Allende
- P.G. Wodehouse (the best humor writer in the world, for those who haven’t heard of him – the best, that is, along with James Thurber and Donald E. Westlake! )
- The Joy of Lex
- Six Plays of the Modern Theater
- Prego – Italian textbook which I got back in 1996, when I took six months of Italian, simply because I love the language.
- Accent – French textbook (used, simply because it made me happy to have it; I’d already studied French for four years – two in school, and two in college).
- Children’s books
- A book on Rock n’ Roll
- A book on Ancient Egypt
- A photograph album
- A book titled Stuntology
- The Italian translation of Gibran’s The Prophet
- Some Margaret Atwood
- Some Anne Tyler
- Some Jonathan Kozol
- A book about Gauguin
- A couple of Marion Zimmer-Bradley books, which I don’t much like (I loved The Mists of Avalon, but that’s on another shelf)
- A couple of Cynthia Voigt books
- A book about Twyla Tharp
- A book about Shakespeare’s Flowers
- The Book of Psalms
- Some Ray Bradbury
- Some D.H. Lawrence
- Some Toni Morrison
- Some Barbara Kingsolver
- Some Gil-Scott Heron
- A book about Astronomy
- Spider Robinson Stardance
- Tracy Kidder Mountains Beyond Mountains
- Herbert Kohl 36 Children
- Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ, and Zorba the Greek
- A Short Treasury of American Humor
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (all of my other Gaiman books are on another shelf)
- Virgil’s Aeneid
- Tim’O’Brien – The Things They Carried
- Spider Robinson – Stardance
- A book about Oscar Wilde (all my other Oscar Wilde books – and I have MANY – are on another shelf)
- Some Graphic novels, including Beowulf illustrated and reworked by Gareth Hinds, who has done some amazing work, especially his graphic novel versions of King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey)
- The inimitable, but misanthropic, James Thurber
- The recently-deceased Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum
Ulysses (which I call somewhat grumpily The Great Unread) by James Joyce
A book on jazz - A book by Neil Young
A couple of books by Noam Chomsky - Several books by Jonathan Stroud and Philip Pullman
- A beautiful book that my Parsee friend Perin Pudumjee (now Coyajee) made of her calligraphic art
- An amazing and moving book called Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
- Journals which are mostly empty, save for a few pages here and there (I’m not great about writing in journals nowadays, unlike how I used to be when I was young)
- Books on language – Italian, French and Russian, which I don’t need anymore, but I loved them when I bought them. I had visions of learning Russian. Perhaps, I still might – you never know!
- An English-Portuguese dictionary given as a gift by my husband when I was in love with Samba Bossa Nova songs.
- Oxford English Dictionaries
There are MANY more bookshelves in the house. We quip that our house is held together and held up by its bookshelves. We also quip that we’ll never ever move again, because the books were so heavy to carry up our 42 steps leading to the house on a sharp incline, that I sprained both my arms back in 2001, when we moved. We joke that the only way we’ll ever leave our home is feet first. (Sorry to sound so morbid here!)
I love our books! I love being at home!
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Tags: #Books, #Humor, #Languages, #Magic Realism, #Shelf
Oct 7, 2015 Writing 201
I have, I confess, NEVER once tried a limerick. I know some people who’re very good at it, and are funny to boot. I tried to be funny, but alas, ’twas not to be! Still, I had a lot of fun making these up. I DO like a challenge. Today’s challenge was to write a limerick about a flaw, using enjambment. Well … I know I did not achieve all three in the first one, so, stubbornly, I went and tried it again. And again. And again. Now, I’m done. If I am to improve, I should read more limericks. I shall do so, but not forthwith!
This Limerick!
©Oct. 7th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
There’s a form of versing I know
Which doesn’t come quite in a flow
It’s, just as you guessed,
My lim’rick, depressed,
Sloth-like, it moves oh, so slow!
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Bad Boy
©Oct. 7th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
There are those who might call you a fool,
Say you’re wasting their time at school
It sure would be nice
If you took their advice
But that would mean being too cool.
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Imaginary Bear
©Oct. 7th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
There was a young puppy today
Who went to the woods to play
He saw a big bear who
Caused quite a scare; You-
Know-Who went yelping away.
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Rumpelstiltskin
©Oct. 7th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
There once was a lovely young maiden
Whose king shut the door; she stayed in
With help, she spun straw
Into gold, but she saw
‘Twas but dross that she had been paid in.
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Tags: #Humor, #Limericks, puppies and bears, purple cows, rumpelstiltskin
Apr 7, 2014 Original Poetry
Banish The Strawberry!
©April 4th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
My strawberry is bright red*, she said.
Red is my strawberry, bright at night
Strawberry is the color of things that are bright
But redness is about blood.
Blood is about life and death.
Is it not?
So, is my strawberry about life and death?
Here, before me, sits the strawberry.
Red as death oozing away from life.
Twitching, lifeless, it sits,
Pulp to pulp,
Juices to juices.
Crushed to dust.
When bright red occurs,
Beware!
Life is ready to flee.
Strawberries are harbingers
Heralds,
Forerunners,
Bringers of death.
Beware the strawberry!
Be not beguiled by its rich
Juicy, pulpy, prickly,
Spotted, green-topped self.
Its true nature lurks,
A serpent in the Garden
Of Eating.
Repeating silkily and pokily.
I am life, life, life,
And, all the while, plotting
Your death, death, death.
YES!
Banish that strawberry.
It means no good.
* KF!
Tags: #Humor, almost NaPoWriMo, fruit poem, strawberry