Mar 6, 2016 Sunday Haiku Horizons
Safe Home
©March 6th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Safety is your voice
Arms and soul and heart so warm
Homeward-bound I am.
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For Sunday’s Haiku Horizons
Tags: #Haiku Horizons, #Original Poetry, Safe
Mar 6, 2016 The Daily Post
Geese, and Catamarans, Cowrie Shells and Smoke
(Daily Prompt: Connections)
©March 6th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
If I send you a string of thoughts
Winging across the air
In goose-formation,
Would you watch their flight?
And would you send back
A flight of thoughts
Winging as surely as geese
Returning in springtime?
Little archipelagos we are
Locked in by surging seas
Close, but not connected
Lonely, we send out catamarans
Carrying our conversations
In exchange for yours
It’s all bartering, this parley
Between us, yours for ours.
Cowrie shells of self in trade,
Cloth of heart and steel of soul,
Gold bangles of love,
And rings of friendship.
Mind you keep mine well,
Treasure them, shine them.
I shall do so, likewise.
For these are precious things.
And I thank you for yours.
Little islands we may be,
But I see smoke spire out from
Your chimneys, and am cheered.
I shall keep my hearth clean,
Dust the ashes, stock my fireplace
Use good kindling, light a fire.
I hope you’ll see the smoke rise.
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Tags: #Connection, #Original Poetry, #TheDailyPost
Mar 5, 2016 Tanka
Today, a Cold Sun (Tanka #1)
©March 5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Today, a cold sun
Breaks upon my window-pane.
Shards of blue scatter.
I sit mute, keys a-tapping,
Awaiting winter or spring.
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Tags: #Original Poetry, #Waiting
Mar 5, 2016 Uncategorized
Gold and Shadow
©March 5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
That reflection you hold
Aloft in your mind’s view?
Find it. Reach it.
Touch it. Understand
It’s the sun.
You’re the one.
(Don’t burn your hand.
Let it teach you.
Don’t let it blind you.)
Turn all into gold.
Don’t let it vanish
Don’t turn your back.
Things can attack
Your dreams. So fight!
Shadows you banish
Come from behind
The light. You’ll find
They gleam. Hold tight!
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Tags: #Original Poetry, Dreams, Gold, Reflections
Mar 5, 2016 Uncategorized
Looking Glass
©March 5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Gaze at the looking-glass
See how you’ve changed.
How easy it is to forget!
Remind yourself today
Of who you are now,
Come, take a bow.
Marvel at who, how
You were yesterday.
Who you want to be, and yet
Not change. How strange!
Can this come to pass?
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Tags: #Original Poetry, Looking Glass
Mar 5, 2016 Uncategorized
Flow, Bacchanal!
©March 5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Make up your mind!
You flow like water,
Move with the wind.
Turn like the tides,
You, Dream’s daughter,
Streaming through
The void of this life,
Don’t avoid strife!
Be wild, be a child,
Dance in beams of light
Wild girl, bacchanal,
Bell-voiced, laurel-leafed
Tread and stomp and whirl
Poised to jump into cool,
Thin air, in relief, never
Return to burn on earth.
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Tags: #Original Poetry, Bacchanal, Flow like water, Wild girl
Mar 4, 2016 Uncategorized
Descent
©March 4th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
First comes desire, an urgent
Pressing need to do:
I want this, I want to do this.
Next comes resistance:
No, I don’t!
I won’t! I cannot!
Then comes stasis.
And the minutes tick away
Lifetimes slide past,
Looking sorrowfully
Out of the corners of their
Eyes, moist with promise.
And grey ghosts crowd at the door.
Beckoning through the wood.
(They can see through it, you understand.)
And one says, “Do you practise?
Do you practise your literature?”
Practise my literature?
What sort of question is that, Dad?
A dream nudges memory:
Carrying a third of an appalam
To Appa, lying on the floor above.
He smiles, pale and alive.
But he’s dead, don’t you remember?
Been dead a few years!
Dust on the floor makes faces
Faces gleam through air and mist.
Faces gibber and point in mirrors.
Faces emerge from bones in dreams.
I like this one best!
Fingers trace patterns on coverlet.
Geometric ones, beautiful,
But gone forever, air-molecules
Carrying away pictures
Into the dustbin of time.
And the music stays on
And on, and on, like madness,
Like a tap that someone forgot to
Turn off.
Turn it off!
Turn it all off!
String together this lute.
Play it on the edge of a cliff.
Start singing to the sun.
Let the song grow.
Get UP!
Descend the stairs.
They never end.
Tags: #Contradictions, #Original Poetry, Descent, Resistance and need
Feb 12, 2016 Uncategorized
Away! (An Aubade)
©February 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Night comes quietly,
Eager to court me,
And pay me tribute.
Soft is the pale cloud
On which we both lie,
And converse, entwine.
Colors flow like songs
And music slides in
Hues beyond my ken.
Sleep is my lover.
We keep our dream-tryst,
Short though it might be.
All is color and wild sound
All is tapestry and string
All is narrative and haze,
Till you arrive, Dawn.
What mean you by this,
Your rude intrusion?
Take yourself back to
Night, where old Tithon
Awaits you, trembling.
And tell your brother
We no longer need
His bright chariot.
Goodbye, O Eos!
Goodbye, Helios!
Stay, O Oneiros!
Let’s go through the gates
Of horn, and never
Come back to this world.
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For those who wish to know, an aubade is a poem about lovers who separate in the morning after a tryst. For more, see Aubade.
Glossary:
Eos — A Titaness, the Greek Goddess of the Dawn
Helios –A Titan, her brother, the Sun, who draws his chariot through the sky
Tithonos — the immortal, but endlessly aging, husband of Eos
Oneiros — Dream personified in Greek mythology
Tags: #Aubade, #Original Poetry, Eos, Greek Myth references, Helios, Lovers, Oneiros, Sleep, Tithonos
Feb 10, 2016 Uncategorized
To a Spider
©February 10th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
With eight eyes, what do you see?
The universe is an octagonal thing.
And all the sounds of it must be
Octaves of sensation!
Do you see eight worlds?
(Allow me my fancies.)
With delicate, eight-legged gait,
You, a creature from another world,
Inhabit the same physical one as I do.
Do you compute in base eight?
And those perfect eight-pointed webs —
How do you calculate them?
(I do wonder at you.)
So many perceptions,
So many perspectives!
So many pensive hours, patiently
Spinning a web, perfectly woven.
(I wish I could love you).
And some shriek in terror
When you swing down, delicately
Putting out your bridges
From one world to the next.
(I do admire you.)
And yet, we don’t hesitate to sweep
Away you and your children,
All that work, aeons for you
In the making of your home,
Gone, gone in a whoosh of vacuum
Or a swish of broom.
(With only two eyes, we don’t see.)
Do you consider us?
Do you fear us?
Do you note us
As living beings?
Or, are we magnified
Monsters from a nightmare
Advancing towards you,
As you scurry to hide?
(Forgive us our trespasses.)
I am
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
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Tags: #Original Poetry, Octagonal world, Ode, Perspectives, Spider
Feb 5, 2016 Uncategorized
Choose Carefully
©February 5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Wonderstruck, thunderstruck,
You twirl on shifting sands
Of contradiction and paradox,
And the dance of life
Becomes dizzy.
To care, or not to care
To work, or not to work
To laugh, or not to laugh
To think, or not to think
To eat, or not to eat
These are choices when
You have plenty.
To be, or not to be —
Dolorous cogitations
That only comfort, and wealth,
And the having of things
Make possible.
Ah, but when you have nothing at all,
To be — that is the only question.
And the answer?
Ah, that’s for you to find,
And Life is patient
So is Time.
Choose carefully.
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Tags: #Original Poetry, Choose, Choose Life, To be, To do, To have