#Metaphorical poem - Vijaya Sundaram

May 14, 2017 Original Poetry

Out of the Nothing That Was
©May 14th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram

First, the hum of mind.
Next, the sound of want.
Then, comes the desiring
The yearning and the seeking,
And the spinning of a Self
Into another, holding
Yet another spool of self
To be spun into newness.
And, out of the silent blood-dark,
A being spins into shape.

And out of the Nothing that was,
Comes forth everything that is now
Which, lying curled within the dark –
A intention, a shifting shape,
A spinning into glowing life,
Holds the heart of sun-and-shadow.

Out of the brooding blood-dark,
Comes a mind, a stirring, a shape,
An abstract intention, a life.

Conscious, attentive, focused,
Glowing with light and impatience,
Composed of disparate cells,
Fusing together for a purpose,
All filled with intention,
We grow into our spinning selves,
Cocooned in a crooning hum.

I think, and thank my mother now.
I think, and thank my daughter too.
And, too, I thank my grandmother,
Also, her mother, and her mother,
All the way back to the blood-start
Of everything, when, a-sparking
Out of the Nothing that wasn’t,
Came forth the Everything that is.
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Tags: #Metaphorical poem, #Mothers'Day, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram

Undoing Penelope

May 13, 2017 Original Poetry

Undoing Penelope
©May 13th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram

So many shimmering threads,
So many interwoven lines,
You weave them all together,
And then undo them all,
As you wait for your beloved,
Lost to you for twenty years.

Why undo yourself, when
You’ve spent a whole life
Making up the pattern
Of this, your cloth?
All this hard work, this love,
Your vigilance, your loyalty,
All these for your beloved,
Gone in an instant,
When you pull out those
Shimmering threads of gold
And purple, and blue and green,
Like sunset over the Aegean?

Are you waiting for the one
Who will make you whole again
And who is that?
Is he sailing from the east
Or riding from the west
Or blowing from the north,
Or floating in from the south.

And what if he had not been
Entrapped and turned into
A boar, or not held enraptured
By a seductress on a lonely isle?
And what if he had not fallen asleep
At the sail, and had the wild winds
Loosed by his jealous, drunken men?
Where would you be, or your story?

There is no one, nowhere.
It is you, yourself, alone, undeterred,
Who will stitch up those ends
Tie those knots, weave that scarf,
Arise from this pointless mourning,
This indolence, this matyrdom.
Your making of yourself
Is the unmaking of yourself.

Around you, mirrors abound
And smoke obscures your vision.
Do you care about the ending?
Why undo this scarf you’ve woven,
Why deny yourself your pleasure
In this beautiful work, your art,
When it could be your shroud?
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Tags: #GreekMythology, #Metaphorical poem, #OdysseyReference, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Penelope

Star

Feb 22, 2017 Free Verse

Star
©February 22nd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram

You fling light out of yourself,

And you fling out darkness

People see what they see.

Those with prisms will see

Colors and lines from emitted light.

Those with spectroscopes will see

All those hidden dark lines.

Your light-lines and dark-lines

Transmitting, absorbing,
Singing with harmonics.

While you swirl in chaos

And dance in order, uncaring.

And out of darkness, planets

Form around you, lonely,

Trapped in orbit.
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Tags: #lightabsorptionandtransmission, #Metaphorical poem, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #starspectrum

To My Daughter, On Her Birthday

Jan 9, 2017 Original Poetry, Uncategorized

To My Daughter, On Her Birthday
©January 9th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram

Can it be that the entire known universe
Arises from a single, careening meeting
Of brooding star-egg and speeding star-sperm?

What sperm travels millions of miles
Full of urgent need, driven through nothingness,
While the warm, dreaming egg awaits?

And when they meet and mate,
What pleasure occurs, and what pain, and what
Amorphous thoughts gather and morph?

And what enormous soundless clashes
Create crackling cradles for stars and comets,
As they make great swoops through space?

And what forces all that void to expand
Endlessly, pushing outward, breaking off
Making stars, making room for planets?

And what fills all that room, in vain
Trying to defeat that yawning void
That looms always, a dark presence?

And what laughter echoes around that void
As we stumble into being, look around, love,
Light candles along the way to our end?

And how did you come to be,
A minuscule embryonic presence
Heavy like a gulp of self inside me?

And how did you emerge, whole, from this,
My body, and grow so tall, so sweet,
So full of song, so full of acceptance?

Twelve years flowing backwards endlessly
To that singular moment when you emerged,
I heard the sound of light pulled into air.

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Tags: #Birthday Poem, #Metaphorical poem, #Mother and Daughter, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram

Archipelago

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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Island

Tags: #archipelago, #Christo, #Connection, #DailyPrompt, #humanity, #indifference, #Islands, #kindness, #Love, #Metaphorical poem, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost