Jan 11, 2018 Original Poetry
Break
©January 11th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am not a fan of broken things.
Still, there’s beauty even in shards.
The light falls so prettily,
So brokenly on them,
And there are so many reflections
Gazing back at me!
Things break – that is a given.
When small things break,
We’re thankful it’s not the big things.
And when big things break,
We’re happy it’s not bigger things,
There always another, bigger,
More beloved, treasured thing.
Thus, we fall apart, little by little,
Happy it’s not the whole of us,
Broken all at once, suddenly, finally.
I wonder what that would be like.
Would I be happy that it’s just
All of me that’s broken, and not
Someone else? Would I know?
Would I grieve this shattering?
Would every broken piece
Long for wholeness?
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Jan 9, 2018 Original Poetry
Child of my Dreams, Child of my Reality
©January 9th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Thirteen years and half a day ago,
The universe opened me up,
And brought you into daylight,
Child of my flesh,
So close, yet so separate.
I sang to you every day,
And named you for the Goddess
Well before I knew you,
Even as your form was being shaped,
Even as your heart beat like a
Little, steady bird in a sky
Beyond my comprehension,
But which I housed
Within the limits of my belly.
You carry your own sky, your
Secret name, your secret song,
And you will let it fill your life.
Once, I, too, was like you
Child of the universe,
Brought into the day,
In the singing cradle
Of my mother’s womb.
I knew her voice
Before I was born,
Just as you knew mine,
My babe, nascent and waxing.
One day, when my particles
Loosen and separate,
And I fly into another sky,
I will leave behind mine
For you, for your dreams,
So that when you fly, we will
Meet, equal in mid-flight,
With a full, pregnant moon
Sailing on our wings.
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Tags: #Birthday, #ForMyDaughter, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 7, 2018 Original Poetry
Snow-Milk
©January 7th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Snow lies thick on trees
Moonlight thickens into milk
Darkness treads lightly.
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Jan 7, 2018 Original Poetry
Love’s Where You Stand*
©January 7th, 2018
©January 7th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Out of the darkness
Out of the dust
Over the river
There came a voice:
Love whom you love
Do what you must
Live, be a Giver
Go make your choice.
Love with your life
Love with your deeds
Love when it’s hard,
With eyes open wide.
When your heart breaks,
Love without need
Pick up the shards,
Toss them aside.
Walk the dark road
That leads to one place
Walk it alone, go
With empty hands
And know this well:
Beyond time and space,
Beyond flesh and bone
Love’s where you stand
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(*Okay, so this is probably my least inspired poem, but still … I’m sticking with my muse.)
Jan 6, 2018 Original Poetry
Pre-Set
©January 6th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Blue skies meet green trees in artificial heat,
And the sunlight borrowers make it day
Where night presses against windowpanes:
A dark-eyed orphan child viewing sweets, and
Forbidden entry by those
Who, spurning reality, make
Its twin indoors.
The curtain rises.
The world sits in suspended animation.
I wonder whether my child is playing music
With my husband, or listening to music,
Or reading, or sewing at home.
I wonder these things for a couple of seconds,
Then, walk into this pre-set world.
Reality recedes into a corner,
And watches its twin.
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Jan 5, 2018 Original Poetry
Diamond and Silk, and Star-shine and Dark
©January 5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Diamond voice in the other room
Cuts the air into brilliant shreds
Silken voices catch those threads
And stitch them back again.
Your voice, a diamond cut from light,
Is made of star-shine in the dark
I treasure it and hold it dear
Even as it makes me bleed.
And yours, my darling, silken soft,
And spun with radiant mystery
If only it would not fade out
When held right close to me.
And starlight cannot compete, child,
With silken threads that seem so light
But silken threads cannot compete
With sharp-edged brilliant light.
I walked into the night-time air
Parting those shreds in greedy haste
Your voice of silk clung to my clothes,
Which trailed me as I walked.
I reached for star-shine, reached for dark
I reached for radiance, met you where
The diamond shatters when it’s thrown
But silk threads put it back again.
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(P.S. I have NO idea why I wrote this! It’s not a reference to ANYTHING!)
Jan 4, 2018 Original Poetry
Genesis – II
(During Bombogenesis)
©January 4th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
We are orphans, those of us
Who think, and feel.
We are orphaned by our gods,
Or God, or the Goddess.
No longer can we cry out to Them,
Or Him, or Her.
Our collective imaginations,
And our collective child-hearts
Grew up, and let Them / Him / Her
Die in the dust of Truth.
For Truth is the dust that swirls
Around our heads,
Now, white like the snow plummeting
Like a descending Darwesh,
To muffle our cries, and stun us
With its power –
Now, white like the sands that
Swirl and shift in treacherous lands
Where the ground can vanish
Under our feet, and we are
Abandoned, abandoned.
We are orphaned, for we
Reject the Voice on High.
We reject the comfort of stories,
Lies that help us through
Times of turmoil, Lies which
Sustain and bear us aloft,
(And carry us, unresisting, to
Our cold, lonely deaths).
We are orphans, yes,
But we will find a new path,
And meet our true friends, and
Our true Destinies.
And Orphans will lead the way,
If there is a way left for us to lead.
And if not, we will make one,
Even if the snow muffles our cries,
And only a few, or Two, are left
Standing on the cold, desolate
Ice of a new Age, a new Race –
Perhaps, with wings, this time.
And will we, then, be
New Gods?
And will we become fiction,
Lies, rejected by any
Who come after?
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Tags: #Bombogenisis, #NewAge, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 3, 2018 Original Poetry
For Eric and Erica
©January 3rd, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
I can’t breathe, he said, eleven times.
His breath left in a last, choked exhale
Vanishing into the pollution of a
Dying afternoon in New York City.
The police, satisfied that they’d
Done their job, waited for seven minutes
For the medics.
It was just another day for them.
Three years later, his daughter lies dead.
She fought to keep his name alive,
And now she’s gone.
Weep for her, America!
Where are your tears?
People abducted, enslaved, freed, betrayed,
Live and die on your streets, America.
You kill your children every second.
You take them by the neck and squeeze them dry,
And fling them away, and order your sidewalks cleared.
And the rich sneer at the husks of humanity
On their streets, and brush off their dust
From their designer clothes,
Noses pinched, and mouths in a straight line.
And the middle-class, eager to emulate,
Scurry in their wake, buying cars and clothes
They cannot afford, mocking the poor.
And the poor spurn those who lie
Wretched, wasted on street-corners.
And you break their hearts,
You break their lives, America.
Are you not satisfied yet?
How many more choke-holds
Will satiate your breath-lust?
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Tags: #EricaGarner, #EricGarner, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Dec 12, 2017 Original Poetry
Turn Away
©December 12th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Soughing music from the highway rises and falls.
Sky-muffled and tree-flanked, the cars flow gently down.
Lassitude, and warm bed, and prone dog at your feet,
Make a dome of silence ringed by soft murmuring.
Comfort is simple – there’s no need for silken sheets,
No need for velvet couches, heavy tapestries,
No need for silver coffee pots, or samovars.
Comfort is in the lying down in your own bed
Held fast in pillowed dreams which come to you alone.
And when you turn your head and see a slant of sun
Something like enlightenment fills your muted mind.
And, turning your head away, you fall back asleep.
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Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TurningAwayFromEnlightenment
Dec 11, 2017 Original Poetry
The Bleaching
©December 11th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The years bleed your skin dry –
Translucency is all that’s left.
Lips once full of unconscious desire,
Are now wistful, remembering all.
Eyes that once invited everyone else’s,
Look inward, students of Time and Loss.
Hair, once boisterous, full of spring,
Now curl only in memory, straggle
Just a bit, mourning their lost bounce.
This is in the world of Sight.
In the world of Sound, something else:
Subsonic and ultrasonic fall behind,
You limp in the middle range, perhaps.
Music still makes you rejoice, or weep.
Voices make you vibrate in sympathy.
You hear more, sense more in the words
That fall like gentle rain or thunderstorms,
Echoing all around you, confusing meaning
With intent, with subtext, with tone.
And you study them, disquieted.
And your nose, more sensitive than before,
Speaks of the sweetness of sweet things,
The rich earthiness of earth things,
The sourness of disappointed things,
And the sickness of ailing things.
And your tongue, curled inside your red mouth
Still delights you with its own taste,
And reminds you that when all is gone,
You will still love the food you eat –
There is lust in your sense of taste.
In the world of touch, everything
Remains, full of exquisite, sensuous memory,
Full of the Now, as your neurons still thrill
And your skin, pale and thin, still trembles.
Your skin, sloughing itself off like a snake,
Still keeps its memories of when you were
Younger and awake, quickening to joy
To sensuous delight, to unaccustomed lust.
When all this is left behind, and you fly,
Will you mourn the loss of self?
Will you stick around the Living?
Will you ache to touch, be touched,
Or, will you dissolve into the air?
And will that air touch those who come
After, reminding them of something,
Filling them with inexplicable sorrow?
Will their senses absorb some of what
You once were, and vibrate in sympathy?
Or, will you walk, transparent now,
A being of air and light, deflecting light,
And not recognize what you see –
All the shadows that move blindly
Through the twilight of their lives?
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