Oct 14, 2017 Original Poetry
Hope is a Dog
©October 14th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Hope is not “the thing with feathers
That perches in your soul.”
Nor is Hope a fluttering thing
At the bottom of a jar.
Hope is the forlorn Dog
Awaiting the return
Of those who’ve gone away
Into the vast Unknown.
Hope is the Waiting Dog
Whose only job is this:
Round up her family
And keep them safely home.
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Tags: #HopeisaDog, #Original Poem, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram
May 10, 2017 Original Poetry
Five Haiku Spill
©May 10th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Large fir tree shivers
Loudly sings the chickadee
Blue sky turns leaden.
Gray clouds lowering
Lilacs bend their purple heads
Tulips sound out light.
Blue-gray dog sleeping
Cushioned in softest music
Mouse peers out, bright-eyed.
New next-door dogs speak
Greetings reach the dog at home
Clamor splits the air.
Dish-pile accuses
Sluggish body coddles guilt
Arise to answer.
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Apr 5, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Lilacs©Vijaya Sundaram, 2016
Growing Old With Lilacs
©April 5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Lilac-trees at the base of our steps –
Purple and white ghosts in May.
Swooning air, gladdened eyes, a
Bunched and tight need to hold on –
Bloom with them.
As quietly as they bloom,
They fade, browning into death.
Every year, without fail,
The lilacs make for a new
Falling-in-love, and out.
Heart beats just a little faster,
Wild need to kiss everything
In sight overwhelms skin.
Shake it off, but hold the feeling
Close within, like a secret romance.
Every year, the relentless onset
Of summer months, the gentle slide
Into autumn, fading all too quickly
Into grim winter, prickly and cold.
One grows older, faster.
So, eternal sunshine lures me
To eternal youth, but perhaps,
That might bore in time.
Besides, if I leave for sunny climes,
I shall miss my lilacs.
Agelessness loses romance.
For without fierce love
And fierce loss, all is
Placid, and placidity
Equals death.
I think I’ll stay and grow old
With my lilacs, and hold their
Fragrance close to my dreaming
Aging self.
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Tags: #Lilacsinmygarden, #NaPoWriMo2017, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram
Jan 8, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Impermanence
©January 8th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
So, it snowed yesterday, and winter came in
Furred and booted, and full of fierce winds
Within, pizza baked, and root vegetables roasted.
We watched from within the warmth
Of home, cluttered and messy and bright
As the snow drifted endlessly down, dream-like, dusty.
Now, Holly leaps in a field of white
And returns, with snow-hardened spaces
Between the pads of her paws.
Patiently, she stands, as I bend down,
Excavate each glob of tight-packed snow,
And rub her cold, cold pads.
Her nose is white, too, snow-encrusted
And her eyes look bright and puppy-ish
As she awaits the end of my ministrations.
The backyard is a small wilderness now
And the first reluctance to step outside
Melts away with the powdery essence of winter.
Blue-white shadows vie with sunlight
As the day lengthens into afternoon, but for now
Blue skies spill down light and lack of warmth.
Cold winter gives way to warm days, then
Returns, like a revolving door,
Slamming me in the face.
Every moment of my life goes by thus
Captured like icicles that glitter in daylight
Permanent in the moment.
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Tags: #dog and snow, #impermanence, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #Winter
Apr 23, 2016 Original Poetry, Senryu, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Disappointment
Do I Disappoint?
(Three Light-Hearted Senryu)
©April 23rd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Do I disappoint?
Asks the sunflower of the sun –
Gentle light rains down.
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Do I disappoint?
Asks the child of her mother
(Love’s cocoon enfolds).
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Do I disappoint?
Asks a dog in mild disgrace –
Grinning tail melts stone.
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Tags: #Disappointment, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt
Apr 2, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt for March 30th, 2016: Voice
Your Voice
©April 2nd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
It is your voice that spells out
Home and shelter, and love,
And quiet certainty.
A conduit of beauty and song,
A channel of kindness, your voice
Allows things to flow.
I shall carry your voice
Like a cup of clear water
In the desert, when the desert comes,
Or a glowing flame in the night,
When darkness descends.
I shall hold it near my ear,
To hear better
Cup it near my eyes,
To see better
Pour it into a palm, and
Drink deep of its assurance.
I have need of it.
Thank you.
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Tags: #Daily Prompt, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #TheDailyPost
Jan 21, 2016 Original Poetry
All photographs©Vijaya Sundaram, 2015-2016
Change, Please
©January 22nd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I wonder about trees.
When I consider my life —
So short, so filled with futile
Railing against this and that,
Filled with pride and fall,
Gain and loss,
Wasted effort, and just waste,
I wonder about them.
When I sojourn in the woods,
And gaze about at all the trees
And the quiet, good life
They lead in shadow and sun
I whisper a blessing,
And sing to them.
So fixed, so full of change,
So clamorous, so quiet
So full of conversation,
They creak and groan,
And rustle, and grunt,
And moan and sigh
And break and bend,
And ache and crack,
And are rent asunder by
Cold so bitter, it hurts
To think on it.
I see them, gnarled
And full of exuberance,
Filled with sunlight,
Born of carbon.
Gods they are —
Not in a fairy tale story,
But right before us.
Tall and rooted and
Full of forgiveness.
Full of secrets, full of knowledge,
They speak with each other
Roots entwined, giving strength
To each other, to the ground,
And the fungi on the mossy earth
Carry their message of life far
Along unseen and seen trails.
With their breath, they gift us
Air and rain and wind.
With their secret seeds,
With their forbidden fruit,
With their singing leaves,
And their clutching branches,
With their purple shade
And their hidden places
Where life might grow,
Or come home to die,
They signal Love.
They change us.
And they die, and are born again,
And die again, and are born again.
And … thus,
They are our true gods.
Love them.
Kneel before them.
And before it’s too late,
Change.
Please.
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Tags: #Life, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #Trees, Woods
Dec 21, 2015 Original Poetry
Plastic Angels — Ten Haiku for the Season
©December 21st, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Lights blink on and off
A tangle of paper and tissue
Such innocent dreams!
Darkness pivots on light
Panic fills waiting houses
Cheer bursting its seams.
Not of this place, nor
This ethos of gift-giving
Shrug on your disguise.
No, we don’t believe.
Weaving our own myths and tales,
Yet, we soothe your lies.
Plastic angels sing
Animatronic reindeer,
All declaring “Hail!”
“Buy!” shriek the adverts
“Make the US great again!”
And greed prevails.
Rudolph’s bright red nose
Is a beacon in the dark
Funny songs abound.
Yes, yes, jingling bells
Red-white, blow-up Santas swell,
Rising off the ground.
The beast slouches, yes,
But under the weight of what?
Miracles, you think?
“Look!” she cries out, “Look!”
Above, a light rises, bright
Below, humans blink.
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Thanks to Andy Townend for hosting Poetry 101 Rehab every Monday! Here’s my first entry, for the prompt, which was about this season.
Tags: #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #Poetry, #Poetry 101 Rehab, commercialism, greed, Holiday cheer, holiness, plastic angels
Aug 13, 2015 Depression, OCD, Teenaged Angst
NineTeenRager
©August 13th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
She bangs her head upon the floor,
Bursting galaxies of pain
Bang, bang, bang!
Stars erupt from her eyes
She spits and retches
Bile arises from hate and pain.
She screams,
A banshee filling her lungs.
She hates with a passion
She hurts unendingly.
It’s all true, it’s all true.
And yet, and yet,
I see her drama in all this,
I see her watch us, awaiting response,
Fierce and hate-filled,
A caged beast trapped in
Its own bars, where there is a
door, but it cannot see it.
I see her calculating our responses.
She sees herself in our eyes
Reflected, refracted, diffracted,
As we leave the room to escape
The onslaught, our senses in disarray.
Demanding our attention,
She screams when she gets it,
“Get AWAY from me, don’t help me!”
Screams louder when we ignore her,
Steps carefully around a bag,
Announcing to her mother,
“I am OCD, I cannot help it,
I cannot help it. I’m mentally ill,
I cannot help it. You hate me,
You all hate me. I’ll never,
Ever come here again.”
Don’t help me!
Help me!
Help me!
Stop helping!
And the galaxies erupt from her eyes
Bursting like flames in our direction,
Spilling like blood onto our floor.
Her helpless mother, caved in,
Full of denial and unexpressed loss,
Broken stars in her own eyes,
Folds clothes calmly, calmly,
Trying not to scream herself.
Blames herself, always, always.
Self-blame, self-accusation
These fill the air.
We look on, helpless.
My own child, wise and accepting,
Understands when I give a terse order,
And ascends to her room, turns up the music,
Reads a mini-Atlas of the world.
(There’s much to learn from the very young.)
The scene goes on and on.
A guitar-string breaks.
My husband fixes it. More frantic
Screaming and crying, as she says,
“Now all the strings have to be fixed,
They’re not balanced!
Aaaaaaah! You don’t understand.
No one understands. No one
Listens to me. You don’t listen to me!”
She cries to her mother.
It’s all too much.
Silently, we leave them to their devices.
But I’m shaking with inexplicable anger.
Her hatred and horrors are infections.
I want this rage out of my house.
I pass by them, while they pack, and
They’re locked within their galaxy
And their stars are turning nova.
I take their bags to the car,
Since both are helpless now,
Incapable of volition.
As they leave, my husband in the car
Ready to take them to the airport,
She, still crying, looks away,
Perhaps blaming me for her outburst,
While her mother and I embrace,
And I wish her mother safe travels,
Wishing them both well, really.
And I climb back up
To my now-quiet home,
The screams shivering into silence
Settle down, and the dust rains down.
And, glad for something to do,
I take broom and pan and sweep
The dust, sweep and sweep.
I am shaken.
I am free.
I wish they could be.
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May 3, 2015 Current Affairs / General Interest, Original Poetry
Speak – A Lamentation
By Vijaya Sundaram
©May 2nd , 2015
Spine broken,
Voice box crushed,
Yet another young man
Dies, beaten in the race
Of life.
Twenty-five years alive —
Now, older than time.
Life stretched before him
Before death came
Cruelly, in the back
Of a nickel-ride van.
He broke his own spine, they say.
They lie! How they lie!
Our hearts fail us, sense falters —
Brazen untruth spewed from mouths of
Killers, snuffers of the weak,
The disenfranchised,
Our police ride strong,
While a son is dead.
He broke his own spine, you say?
I laugh in disbelief.
But some buy their story
Listening with stretched ears
To lies pouring from all sides.
For lies sustain some,
And comfort them, while
They sit spellbound,
While flat-screens, plasmic,
Pour out flat people
Speaking flatly about
A three-dimensional world
Rendered two-dimensional —
A grotesque Guernica
Sans history, sans meaning,
To those who sit,
Gesturing with painted fingernails,
Dyed hair, painted-on smiles,
Or communing with
Neatly slicked-back hair and
Business suits, patent-leather shoes,
Sputtering about matters they know not of.
But this death looms over us, while
Yet more voices arise —
An ark on a wave of sorrow.
And who will ride this wave?
And who will bring the ark
To land again?
And who will bring back
The olive branch, the olive leaf
And who will sight land?
And who will stand tall
And who will speak
And whose backs
Will take the weight
Of all they need
To build again, anew?
And who will remember
And mourn all the
Freddie Grays
Of the world
Extinguished, voiceless,
Back broken?
And who will speak for them?
And who will listen?
And who will heal
A nation that kills its own?
Tell me when you know.
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