May 11, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
All photographs©Vijaya Sundaram, May 2016
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Generation
Beans to Be
©May 11th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Yesterday, with the sun pouring
Streams of honey on fragrant flowers,
With the bees drunk with it all,
And the birds singing, their
Unfettered joy ringing in trees,
With the rain clouds hiding,
My daughter and I planted beans
In earth rich with humus and manure
Which I’d worked over the
Previous sun-soaked day.
Small, and curved and tender,
Beans slipped into one-inch holes
From our gloved hands.
They lay there, vulnerable,
And we covered them over,
As I sang in my mind,
“Grow, little beans, grow!”
Tenderness filled me,
Such a strange emotion to feel
On that warm spring afternoon!
Named, staked, marked, and watered,
Our beans lie cradled in dark, tasty soil
Full of the green tug of growth,
Ready to bring forth new life.
Generations of beans, pale green
Resembling tiny to-be-beings
Promising food, lie waiting,
Waiting for their turn in the light
With no giant or Jack to break them,
As they await the hot days of summer.
While spring flowers bloom
And bees stagger in drunken stupor
And the dog goes mad with joy,
While I follow them into
Sweet, daydreaming delirium,
Sun-saturated and content,
No emotional surges, no loneliness
No angst or stabs of passion
No confusion or climaxes assail me,
When I think about our beans to be.
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Tags: #Daily Prompt, #Generation, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
May 11, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry
All Those Opossums
©May 11th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
All those opossums
Crossing the road
In cold, cruel North America
Where cars drive by, oblivious,
Callous and uncouth, eating the horizon,
Metal behemoths, graceless and soulless
Carrying fleshy bipeds, intent on pleasure,
Needlessly texting, swilling coffee, eating.
All those opossums,
Slow and sweet
Full of lumpish grace
Full of beautiful tiny-eyed wonder
Full of somnolence and moonlight
Full of love, and need and fear
Full of the urge to get the hell across.
Look! There come a pair of yellow eyes
To blind an opossum’s little bright ones.
Hurry, little opossum!
The moon hides her face.
The moving clouds freeze.
Lilacs bloom in purple grief.
Heedless, the human drives on.
Somewhere, someone will grieve
For you, little opossum.
Somewhere, someone will remember
That you once lived.
And you will live again
Slowly crossing the highway
On a moonlight night,
With the scent of blooming lilacs
Wafting you along your way.
No humans will zoom by
Milky clouds will move gently across
And you will lump across with grace
WIth your six children on your back,
Ruling the roads, and the moon
Will sail you safely home.
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May 9, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Chaos
Take Off The Lid
(On the Chaos in My Mind)
©May 9th, 2016
Want a peek into pure chaos?
Lift the lid to my brain
Go on, do it!
Ah, I knew you were too scared
Worried about what you’d find, eh?
Here, I’ll take you by the hand,
Shine a torch into the darkened corridors
Let the air in a bit.
Here’s a room filled with insecurity:
Too many doubts, too few doubts,
Too much judgement:
For doing, or not doing,
For being, or not being
This, or that, or the other.
Castigate myself:
Too many moral standards
To vault over.
Too many ambivalences,
Too many opposing pulls:
Should I, shouldn’t I?
Why should I?
Too many fears, unspoken anxieties.
Commitments to flee from
Commitments to bind myself with.
And while loving getting older,
I’m hating it with a passion.
Wishing to borrow this mind
And inhabit my younger self.
Walk cautiously, the dust will
Choke you, trip you up.
Here’s a room filled with joy:
Music, music, music swirling
Like flower-strewn winds.
Rich pleasure in simply being
In my skin, oh how lovely!
Love, so much love, bursting
With love for so many!
Sensuous joy – mine alone.
All that sunlight to drink,
All those colors to steep my skin in,
All those fragrances in which to drown,
All those birds to gaze at,
All those silken scarves to
Brush against my silken skin.
(Older silk is sweeter, by far)
All the love my husband pours over me,
And which gives me life.
The sweet hugs my daughter gives me
When I do some simple thing for her.
All the pleasures of moving
Feeling my limbs working,
Feeling sunlight and warmth
The sliding down of grateful food
The slipping of delicious drink
That soft sigh my dog makes when
The night makes her curl up.
The sense of spinning from
The earth, as I walk gratefully
Upon her, enjoying life.
Walk cautiously, the clamor here
Can be deafening, even if it’s
A noisy celebration, and
The lights are too bright.
And it’s all jumbled up here.
Sometimes, in the midst of
This room of joy, a remembered
Sorrow trips me up.
I could organize all this,
Label them neatly and file
Them away into happy
Memory drawers, a file cabinet of sorts,
But they’re ongoing. They’re alive,
Not forgotten, not lost.
I need to move some of them
Into another room, larger, quieter,
But for now, I let them lie,
Ready to leap into life.
And sometimes in the room of
Deep insecurity, piled high
With old worries, or privations,
I see a passage of pure light,
Leading to an open window,
And see that I simply need
To chuck most of that stuff out,
But not into the yard,
No, chuck them out, and make
Them vanish with a simple spell.
That would restore order,
But allow some chaos
To linger amidst it all.
I wouldn’t mind that.
For, in chaos,
Surprises lurk, and lie in wait.
And I don’t mind a little dust,
Even if it makes me cough.
And the occasional gleaming jewel
I find, as I pass through, is worth
A thousand dust bunnies.
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Tags: #Chaos, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 9, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Stroll
Cloudy Stroll
©May 9th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Take a stroll down your street
See that leaf spiraling in the wind?
Pick it up, stick it in your hair.
A piece of sunlight, green-veined,
Is yours for an hour.
See that man with his hound?
Slow and old and heavy they are,
Sweet and sad and patient.
There’s gentleness in his smile,
Protectiveness in the dog’s look.
Stop and pat the dog, who’s
Now accepted your existence.
His former loud bark, a mere
Expression of his being, now
Gone, as he looks up, quiet,
Calmly allowing my patting,
Perhaps drawing comfort therefrom.
The dog’s golden eyes seek mine,
There’s knowledge of death in his.
“They think he’s got cancer,”
Said the man, tragedy lurking in his smile.
My heart lurches. Tears sting.
I’ve come to love this barky hound.
I move on in the opposite direction,
Full of affection for Huckle,
And full of sadness for his master
Whose name I do not know.
And I walk on, homewards,
Wordless in mind, full of visions.
The sun slants through
The reassuring oak tree
Whose acorns
Scattered all around from last fall,
Still linger in spots.
This dog’s inevitable stroll
Through his days to his end
Hurts me.
I, too, will face death someday.
I don’t mind mine –
I mind his.
The afternoon sun seems sombre
Strange clouds gather on the horizon.
A cloudy stroll on a sunny day.
I ascend the steps leading upwards,
Up to my house on a hill.
Daffodils and tulips gulp the light.
And pale lilacs leave the ghost
Of their purple fragrance
On the sweet, damp air.
My heart is full of dog.
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Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Stroll, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt
May 8, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry
Beggars
©May 8th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The temple bells ring
And the air is filled with light.
The beggar sits outside
The gates, metal bowl clinking
With coins from grudging charity.
He sings of long ago with aching voice.
Milky-blind eyes see darkness,
Broken arms end in stumps.
The beggar sings of God and mercy
His sun-baked voice cracks
Like an old porcelain cup
Filled with sorrow, refilling
With salt tears, endless like a sea.
The cracks spread, the cup breaks.
The beggar lies there,
Surrounded by light.
People move briskly like water
Drawing in their clothing
To avoid touching him, as they
Walk to the temple, eyes
Fixed on their own Eternity
Seeking enlightenment.
Tags: #Beggars, #Inhumanity, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
May 7, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Sacrifice
Sacrifice
©May 7th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I cannot see this word
Without an inward hush,
An awe descending like mist
Obscuring sight and sense,
And I feel the presence
Of something huge and solemn
Stand at the very edges of my vision.
A Being, an Idea, a Universe,
Imploding, to be remade.
And I kneel in obeisance.
This is what a mother does.
This is what a father does.
This is what a teacher does.
This is what a lover does.
If my time comes, when it comes,
I hope I am ready.
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Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Sacrifice, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt
May 6, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Shadow
Shadow-Life
©May 6th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
For every place I care to go
She likes to elsewhere,
For only she and I can ever know –
And who’s to say we care?
For every word I choose to say,
She thinks another word,
And just like me, she tends to stay
In lands of the unheard.
For every song I love to hum,
She sings another song
The echoes reach and bring me some
Regret where I belong.
And thus they flow, go on and on,
Our shadow-lines of time.
It breaks and flows, until it’s gone,
This life that’s hers and mine.
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Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Shadow, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt
May 5, 2016 Haibun, Original Poetry
Grey Day Amidst Purple, Red and Blue
~A Haibun~
©May 5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Grey sky, goose-feathers,
And silver rain sliding down
What songs can be born?
Alone, I sit in my blue room with midnight blue curtains, and blue-saturated paintings, with a poster of Bleu, a film by Krzysztof Kieslowski on my left, and a huge bookshelf on my right. And I write, though I know not what I feel. Two birds arrested in mid-flight, one at each window, one made of straw, the other of metal, speak to me of long ago. Two long strands of blue decorative dangling things, with fish interspersed with small round, embroidered mirrors at my window, and a blue glass seahorse move lightly in an unseen draught of air. And beyond the glass windows stretches all that pearly grey. Oh yes, there are trees slowly learning to be green amidst the brown ones, and, if I stand and look out of the window, I can see the red splashes of tulips amidst the grey, like large drops of blood suspended in air, held up by delicate green stems below. And I feel nothing right now. I am a seeing creature, all eyes.
Tulips sing of blood
Lilacs bloom like light desire
I sink into sight.
May 5, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Beach
Seaslide
©May 5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The sea casts up her dying fish
The sea casts up her nets
The sea won’t grant our dying wish
The sea does not forget.
The beach collects our broken days
The beach collects our souls
The beach allows us time to play,
While he erases goals.
The beach slides everybody down,
Down to the restless sea,
And we, poor fools, shall all be drowned
Before we come to be.
Before we come to live and be
Before we can begin.
We’ll pay, for life is never free –
The sea will always win.
And sliding soft, the beach does flow
Roiling come the waves.
And they will wait – for each one knows
We’ll clamor to be saved.
We’ll clamor to go down, my dear
We’ll try to be so brave
But in the end, we’ll drown, my dear
And give back what they gave.
The sea will hum along, my dear
The beach will slide so slow
And they will sing a song, my dear
While soft, our lives will go.
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P.S. Before you start wondering about my mental state, nothing in particular inspired this poem. I simply felt like writing it. Sometimes, a poem’s just a poem. 🙂
Tags: #Beach, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt
May 5, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Hope
Hope Springs
©May 4th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Eternal, they say.
Now, in May, I cannot see
How a real Spring will
Return – with sun and rain,
And birdsong and flowers
And plants to go into the ground
And people singing in the rain,
Of a planet balancing itself
Keeping track of its heat and cold
And its axis tilted evermore
Away from normal –
When all I see is mist and cloud,
Drawn faces, and hurrying
And scurrying and worrying
Everything blurring before me,
All hope of people seeing what’s real,
Of people seeing reason,
Of having reason
To hope,
Gone.
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Tags: #Hope, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt