Feb 23, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Cold Fire, Warm Fire
©February 23rd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Fires which cast a cold, impersonal light
Are fires that do not warm.
I want to be one who casts a flickering glow
And warms you to your very core.
And I shall try not to burn out too soon.
But when I do, remember this:
I vanished in smoke, and climbed to meet the Sun.
And this, here, mattered not one whit.
And yet, this, here, matters forever, endures
In contradiction is truth born.
So, thank you for what you’ve been, and are to me
Though the wind buffets, I’ll hold on.
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Tags: #BeingMortal, #ColdFireWarmFire, #Immortality, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
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.
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
Feb 22, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Broken, Mend
©February 22nd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I love you, and you, and you.
I love them, and them, and them.
But not those who crush love.
Pity them, and fear them
For what their fear
Has visited upon them.
Unwilling to look in the mirror,
The empty ones redirect their gaze
Back at others, innocents all,
Who, moving through their lives
Breathe truth and love,
In anxious toil and hope –
And, redirecting, the empty ones
Try and destroy, over and over.
Jealous and fearful their rage
It must be stamped out.
And how, how?
I wish love upon them.
I wish pity upon them.
I wish sorrow upon them.
I wish an uprush of self-terror so great
It will tear through their defenses –
Where they cower and hide
And scroll through lies –
And lay bare their empty space,
Where the ground is barren,
Where the light is borrowed.
Where the voices are broken,
Where their minds are blind.
And as they rush about to tend
To their self-wounds, in the fabric
Of the walls so lacking in love,
They will collapse, and wail,
And the skies will drown them
With rain and quench
Their empty places.
Let us go in, and
Plant some seeds.
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Feb 7, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Here and Gone
©February 7th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Snow came down like sleep.
And I watched flakes fly by me
As I drove down the street.
Like the vanishing of the world
As it dissolves into dream-dust,
The snow melted into itself
And remained, still.
I wondered at it.
How can something vanish
And still remain?
I wondered at it.
How can something vanish
And still remain?
When I die, I should like
To go like snow.
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Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Snowandvanishinganddeath
Jan 30, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Rescue
©January 30th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
©January 30th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
What do you say when
Democracy spins towards
An end that you didn’t
Vote for?
You cry, “Not on my watch!”
And you, and you, and you
Race towards it
As it teeters at the edge
Of a wedge of earth, a cliff,
Suicidal and mad, a King Lear
Full of fear, sans love, sans reason,
Made small by greed and loathing.
And you grab it by the ankles
Spinning it towards you,
And you, and you, and you, and it
And you, and you, and you, and it
Are falling backward on the cool, cool grass.
You see the sky
Reeling above your head
And you join hands and smile.
And bit by bit, you (and you, and you)
Lift it up, as it staggers
Tottering, but alive, and lead it
Back to where it came from.
And you, and you, and you,
Nurse it back to health.
Do not let it die.
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Tags: #democracy, #DesperateRescueofaNation, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 19, 2017 Uncategorized
Still Life With Stegosaurus and Bird
©January 19th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
An impossibility sits before me
A yellow bird perched on the head
Of a bemused and patient stegosaurus
Carrying a tall green candle.
I would like to shed light upon this matter
But I’d only scatter confusion
The stego’s eyes, red and determined,
Stare straight ahead, intent on
A journey that will never end.
(No one mentioned meteorites to him.)
The bird sings silently of the future,
One in which she will exist,
But not the stegosaurus.
(The bird wisely keeps her counsel.)
I catch her glance,
and put my finger to my lips.
We do not look at each other again.
I rise, turn out the light,
Proceed to bed, quiet as the night.
For now, they’re both safe.
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Tags: #BirdandStegosaurusandCandle, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 19, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Woodlight
©January 18th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
We walked through the woods
Dog leaping like salmon ahead.
The sun was out, and the day stretched
Silk-like and shining, strand by strand,
As we took the crunchy path into the Fells,
Green in the whispering woodlight.
Mosses and fan-shaped fungi,
Snagged our attention as we walked
And the dog was joyous, for we paused
And, arrested by moss and dead leaves,
We did what she does … study the woods,
She with her nose, we with our eyes,
As the trees went about the business
Of the season, conversing quietly,
Dying by degrees, and mostly
Confident of resurrection.
The sky, silvery and shimmering
Broke into shards, as the dog
Stepped on cracking pond ice, snapping
Happily at frozen water.
Fractured images splintered into light.
We stood and drank the moment,
As the woods waited for us
To leave them in peace.
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Tags: #FamilyWalkintheWoods, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 19, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
The Tao of Tiredness
©January 18th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I waste time like there’s no tomorrow
I borrow from my future, wandering
In place, as I squander the Now,
And scatter my largesse
To the fainting hours.
I sit, and let my cells multiply
And die, as I contemplate
What the present holds,
As I hold a glass of water
And stare at nothing.
I resist sleep, and resist action.
I resist factions and subtract
Any attempt at thought
From what I ought to do
I must be content, but I’m spent.
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Jan 16, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Light-Purpose
©January 16th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Crystals hang down from the little chandelier
Like fat drops of arrested rain
Frozen into tear-drops, cut into facets,
Full of glinting light.
I like this little chandelier.
All it can hold is just
One little votive, but for now,
That little pleasure is denied it.
One strand of crystals is missing
I feel towards my little chandelier
A rising tenderness, a softness
A need to say, There, there, it’s all right.
But all I do is gaze at it,
And feel myself transform into
A fat, pendulous tear-drop
Dangling down from a metal ring.
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Tags: #crystalchandelier, #findingone'spurposeinlife, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 16, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Accusation
A Poem on MLK, Jr. Day
©January 16th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Come, hold my hand, stand beside me
Look! Out here, at the edge of the known
We have worked, my love, how we have worked!
We made a pledge to honor, to preserve, to conserve
We made a pledge to raise up our fallen brother and sister,
We made a pledge to lift up the oppressed, the adrift,
We worked to clean the air, and make better the soil,
We worked to teach and learn that which would redeem,
Dreaming of Good.
Stand by me, here, at the edge of all that’s good
And see below, the miasma swirling upwards
Rising towards us, full of venom, full of spite
Ignorance and hatred writhe snake-like in the chasm.
Demented laughter echoes hollowly through the hills
While we cherish the words, the deeds, the courage
Of those who strode boldly into the precipice of the unknown,
So that they could map out the terrain, while we waited
For a sign.
But what if the terrain has no features?
What if all that’s good dies in the quicksand?
For, greed and indifference, and bilious prejudice
Flow through the arteries of those who would rule us.
Freed from all constraints, from the need to uphold the Good,
They laugh, and eat, and drink, and toast one another
While seas rise higher, and animals drown, and the air,
Thick as pea-soup, struggles down our windpipes
Into our lungs.
Shall we resist, shall we fight, shall we call it a war?
And what manner of fighting shall we do, since everything
That can be tried has been tried?
And will they, those consumed by prejudice and hatred,
Recognize our peaceful resistance to their bigotry?
Yet, fight we must, resist we shall, because how else
Can we turn, face our children, whose mute eyes,
Gazing across their dying inheritance straight at us,
Will say, J‘accuse?
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Tags: #ForOurChildren, #MLKJr.Day, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #resisttyranny