Nov 16, 2017 Original Poetry
The Delivery-Driver and the Highway
©November 16th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
When you fly down the highway
Stationary in your car, carrying
Fancy lunches for rich children,
Time ceases to have meaning.
Still, you check your clock often.
The odometer brightly indicates
That time has passed, since
Velocity occurs in space and time.
And yet you sit motionless, staring ahead,
Checking behind, and sides, while
Others move with you, all gazing forward.
Listen to music, or sing out loud,
Yell at the top of your lungs,
And whisper beneath your breath.
Finish conversations you began
Within you, long ago in your past.
Clear your mind of cobwebs,
And feel free, so free, beyond
The reach of others seeking you.
And all the while, zooming across the
State line, you leave the ghost of ancient trees
And ancient beasts hanging in the air
Behind you, your tailpipe a taunt.
A stunned landscape approaches.
You gasp.
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Tags: #Driving, #FossilFuelReference, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Nov 15, 2017 Original Poetry
Too Much to Bear
©November 15th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
So many identities criss-cross,
So many selves intersecting
So many pathways to life
And food, and love, and food,
And death!
Too much awareness leads
To a heart bursting at the seams.
All of life beckons, all creatures
Looking for food, for fun, for love.
How can any one person bear it all?
Better to be a snail creeping
Slickly along a garden wall,
Or, a tortoise plodding sagely on
Towards a tasty bit of lettuce.
No thought intrudes upon them,
Save the impulse to feed and breed.
Better to be a black-crowned night heron
Perching placidly on a branch
Gazing at unbearable beauty
Like a Buddha, unperturbed,
Ready to plunge into wetlands
At the approach of dusk,
Ghostly and calm, looking
Straight into the air.
People pierce through me,
Animals slay me.
It’s all too much for one person to bear.
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Nov 14, 2017 Original Poetry
At the End of a Long Day
©November 14th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
It isn’t easy.
I want to be gentle rain.
Alas! A downpour!
At times, rainbows form
Alas, too quickly, vanish.
Thunderclouds again.
……
Aspire to one’s self
Sitting there atop a cliff
Climb carefully up.
Catch yourself falling,
Here a branch, there a small shrub,
Climb the cliff again.
……
Existence is clouds
Gathering around one’s feet,
One’s head in the sky.
Below, nimbuses
Above, nebulae and suns
Wait! I’m upside down!
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Nov 13, 2017 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Dampnation
©November 13th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Pearl-gray skies drop down.
See a world saying goodbye.
Layers peel away.
It is always thus.
Rain-dark afternoons beat wings
Yearning for lift-off.
Lift-off cannot be
With damp thinking in damp skies
Fold your wings. Go home.
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Nov 12, 2017 Original Poetry
Flight-Route*
(Five Haiku)
©November 12th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Birds fly south by rote
A route forged and forced by time –
Still, we find meaning.
And in those meanings
We etch those pathways in gold,
And the air quivers.
It matters not that
Life is leaves whirling in dust –
There’s strange beauty there.
It matters little
If we’re remembered, or not –
Our ghosts’ echoes ring.
Work, play, love and lust
Beat their futile wings against
Unseen glass. Just laugh.
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*In response to Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov.
Tags: #haiku, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #PoeticResponsetoThreeSistersbyAntonChekhov
Nov 11, 2017 Original Poetry
Life-Force
©November 11, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
She went shopping with me
Just to see people and things,
To escape the old and infirm
Who pushed their walkers
Around the halls and sitting room.
She went shopping with me
And negated her ninety-four years.
The life-force strong within,
She bought herself underwear
And mittens, and chocolate.
Flirted with the young cashier.
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Nov 10, 2017 Original Poetry
Nestling
©November 11th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
When I lift up my eyes, and spread
My arms out wide, then hug the air,
Wrapping its coldness close, so close
I know I’m holding all of life.
Billions of people, animals
Enclosed here, nestling in my arms.
All of the past, coldly resting
In this present, aching for warmth.
I hold them close, because, one day,
I shall be one with them, and one
With the creature who comes after
I’m gone, shuddering in sunlight.
And we will look up, all of us,
And ask to be fed, clamoring
In concert, till the mother bird
Returns, and we’ll be warmed again.
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Nov 10, 2017 Original Poetry
Blind Spot
©November 10th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am my own blind spot
Right in the middle
Of mind and matter.
And it matters
That I cannot see what
I see, because of all
I think I see. This I mind.
I mind very much.
I mind very much.
Things come up from the side
And sneak up from before.
And I shake my head,
Relieved at swerving
Just in time.
And when that collision
Does happen,
When I stop to think
In mid-drive, pausing for
Directions, taking note,
Will something come at me
From behind? Will I survive?
Or, when I’m in mid-walk,
Will I walk straight into
That thing that’s been
Waiting patiently on the
Sidewalk where I tread, as I
Read the skies, scan
The air, take the mood
Of the winds,
Unaware of that quiet, patient,
Deadly thing that’s been there
Since the beginning?
And will I adjust my vision?
Will I look around more,
And avoid doing damage,
Or, will I simply sit down,
And refuse to keep moving?
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Nov 9, 2017 Original Poetry
It Isn’t
©November 9th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
It isn’t that I don’t love life –
Even if sometimes it feels that way,
It is that I don’t hate death.
It isn’t that I don’t want things –
It is that I want them in the moment,
It is that I want them indifferently.
It isn’t that music calls to me
It is that it calls from within,
All the time, all the time,
And sometimes, I don’t listen.
It isn’t that I don’t love you
And you, and you, and you.
I do, I do – it is that I love life.
It isn’t that I don’t love life enough –
It is that I love something more,
Something more than life.
I want to swallow the stars
Like a giant dragon
Swallowing gemstones.
I want to birth planets
And watch them glow,
Watch them grow old
And cold.
I want to spin and spiral
Into cold, vast spaces,
And die and die again,
And laugh hugely while
The universe plunges into me,
While I plunge into it,
Struggling and pulling each other
All the way through chaos,
To form a perfect, pulsating,
Diamond-hard point of light
And blink out.
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Nov 9, 2017 Original Poetry
Softly, softly
©November 9th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Come around the corner now,
Softly, softly.
Stop here, lest your feet stir up
Dust into animacy.
Take your time, and gently tread
Softly, softly.
Look around, and smell the air,
Settling quietly on your form.
Look around, and note it all
Softly, softly
People, places, songs and things,
Settling swiftly in your life.
Note them all, and keep them close
Softly, softly.
Store them up, and keep them safe,
Till you reach the other side.
As you fade quickly away,
As you fade quickly away,
Softly, sofly,
Sing of love and float it back
Round that corner whence you came.
Softly, softly.
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