Apr 14, 2017 Clerihew, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Three Clerihews
©April 14th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde
When asked what he had to declare, smiled
“Only my genius, but nothing besides.”
America became a reluctant bride.
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Marie Antoinette
Kept a little papillon pet
When he was hungry, and wanted bread
She allegedly gave him some cake instead.
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Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin
Had a long beard that hid his weak chin
This, and his hypnotic power over the queen,
Led to his death, with scandal in between.
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Today’s NaPoWriMo2017 prompt for Day 14 was to write a clerihew.
Tags: #Marie Antoinette, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Oscar Wilde, Grigori Rasputin
Apr 13, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Nearly Cut
©April 13th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
You gazed at her across the dancing veil of her life
And you found yourself dancing on the blade of a knife
It’s not the knife-wound that hurts, but your fear of falling.
Did you think that when your pale shadow touched her shadow
That she would forget herself, that her weakness would show?
It’s not the knife-wound that hurts, but your fear that’s calling.
Yes, she did forget herself, but her shadow was strong.
She would not cut it away from her, and you were wrong.
It’s not the knife-wound that hurts, but the fear of crawling.
She lived in the light, you in the heart of illusion
What did you hope to gain from her near-dissolution?
It’s not the knife-wound that hurts, but failure that’s galling.
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Today’s poem is an exercise in a form I’ve never tried before: The “ghazal.” I have my misgivings about it, since it’s a form of Urdu poetry/song, and it seems strange to try and import that into English, but hey! Might as well try it. My couplets have a 13-syllable count per line for no reason other than that I wanted it to be so. And there’s a refrain, with a modified ending for each time it repeats.
Today’s Day 13 NaPoWriMo 2017 prompt reads, in part:
Today’s is an oldie-but-a-goody: the ghazal. The form was originally developed in Arabic and Persian poetry, but has become increasingly used in English, after being popularized by poets including Agha Shahid Ali. A ghazal is formed of couplets, each of which is its own complete statement. Both lined of the first couplet end with the same phrae or end-word, and that end-word is also repeated at the end of each couplet.
Tags: #Ghazal, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #UnrequitedLove
Apr 12, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Ageing: An Alliterative Ambivalence
©April 12th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Glimmering light on golden paper-skin
Glazed with age, making way
For pale cracks in the frail porcelain –
Light settling like a smile on silver hair –
Hair, coruscating like a cormorant
On the wing, wending its white-breasted way
Across a flash of febrile water, agitated
By Spring hurtling pell-mell into heat-hell.
Eyes, deep and wise as a well in the woods
And fingers, gnarled, not nimble anymore
Fumble at their knitting, but the skill’s still there.
Bones like biscuits, ready to crumble,
But still intact, still indicating strength.
Set of shoulders, thin, tight from aching
Under the burden of a full life, betraying
Tension, but not fear, not frustration.
Muscles knotted tight – mere
Massage could never undo them.
For, if they were to un-knot, and the shoulders
Were to relax, she would unwind unawares,
And float away, like dandelion fluff, farther
Than she has ever dreamed of going.
Should she, she wonders dismally, despairing –
Then shakes off the thought, through habit.
There’s too much life left in her light-filled attic.
Dandelion-fluff can wait for another frail decade.
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Today’s Day 12 NaPoWriMo 2017 prompt reads:
Today, I’d like you to write a poem that explicitly incorporates alliteration (the use of repeated consonant sounds) and assonance (the use of repeated vowel sounds). This doesn’t mean necessarily limiting yourself to a few consonants or vowels, although it could. Even relatively restrained alliteration and assonance can help tighten a poem, with the sounds reinforcing the sense.
Tags: #Alliterative Poetry, #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Portrait of an old woman
Apr 12, 2017 Bop, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Pleasure Can Be Worn
©April 12th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Outside, the sun is proud and strident.
The air hammers blacksmith-blows
Onto exposed skin. A heavy weight
Settles in the cavity in my chest.
Birds celebrate, loud and defiant
Against a too-early summer; why not I?
Daffodil yellow is my scarf; cheerfulness can be worn.
Sleep is a melody, but my voice cracks like glass
Every day, a gathering of strength
Slow and steady, a fight against lethargy
One succeeds from habit; one smiles, it’s real.
But too much reality radiates jagged lines
From a broken point, and through the break,
Recycled sunshine pours down, awakening
Daffodils in a supermarket; I gaze at them.
Daffodil yellow is my scarf; cheerfulness can be worn.
Your scarf and you belong with these daffodils,
She says to me, her silvery hair and cheerfulness
Making the air ripple, while I gaze at pots of flowers.
The weight, now with attached balloons, floats sunwards.
Too much reality, too many jagged lines, melt
Into bright light, birdsong, simple pleasure in colour.
Daffodil yellow is my scarf; cheerfulness can be worn.
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This is in response to the prompt for Day 11 of NaPoWriMo 2017.
Tags: #Bop Poetry, #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Apr 10, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Lost Fish – A Portrait
©April 10th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The air parts when she moves
Heavy and awkward in her bones,
Graceful, too, like a fish or seal,
Beautiful in her element.
Her eyes hold loss and release it,
As a thirsty child might cup
Her hands at a stranger’s water-pump,
Drinking, letting flow, letting fall,
Evaporating, noting what is being lost.
There is humour there, too
And clarity, and wit.
Eyes that see, and know.
Eyes that break down
The composition of all the loss
That flows, evaporates.
Eyes that are not deceived.
There is love of beauty,
Of music, of art,
But the head interferes,
Muscling in, shoving
All of that to one side,
Coolly calculating loss.
Deep within, loss
Spreads like a pool
At the bottom of a waterfall
On the side of a remote mountain
And holds a single fish
Flashing its fin in the sun
Gulping air, her fish.
And below it, glinting,
A knife.
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This is my response to Day 10 of NaPoWriMo 2017. The prompt was to write a portrait of someone important.
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Portrait
Apr 9, 2017 Balassi Stanza, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Ride the Wave
©April 9th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The past does not live here
The future interferes
This place is for the present
Free yourself as you fall
The sea is for us all
Your splash is phosphorescent.
Count every glowing wave
And ride it to your grave
You are not convalescent.
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NOTE: I used the Balassi Stanza for my nine-line poem, and it goes thus:
Rhyme scheme: a. a. d. b. b. d. c..c. d
Syllable count: 6. 6. 7. 6. 6. 7. 6. 6. 7.
Our NaPoWriMo Day 9 prompt was this:
Because today is the ninth day of NaPoWriMo, I’d like to challenge you to write a nine-line poem. Although the fourteen-line sonnet is often considered the “baseline” form of verse in English, Sir Edmund Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene using a nine-line form of his own devising, and poetry in other languages (French, most particularly) has always taken advantage of nine-line forms. You can find information of various ways of organizing rhyme schemes, meters, etcetera for nine-line works here. And of course, you can always eschew such conventions entirely, and opt to be a free-verse nine-line poet.
Tags: #AdvicePoem, #NaPoWriMo 2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Apr 8, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Resurgence
©April 8th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Look! It’s raining all around!
See the water rushing down
Down the streets, and in the town
Down the gutters, sodden grounds!
Down into the river, flowing.
Water, swelling, rising, growing.
Swollen rain, surprising, throwing
Caution to the winds a-blowing.
Buds appear on lilac trees.
Buds appear with sudden ease,
Bursting from their hidden seeds,
Bursting with a need to be.
Bursting with purple-to-see
Bursting with abandoned glee
Bursting amidst sticks and weeds,
Unrelenting in their speed.
Spring comes to us like a child
Vulnerable, naked, wild,
Begging to be rocked, beguiled
With songs of love, delighted smiles.
Catch that wildness, trap that hue
Give your life that which is due
Make it springtime, make it through.
Make yourself a child, anew!
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Today’s Day 8 NaPoWriMo 2017 prompt reads:
…I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that relies on repetition. It can be repetition of a phrase, or just a word. Need a couple of examples? Try “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe, or Joy Harjo’s “She Had Some Horses”. Poe’s poem creates a relentless, clanging effect through the repetition of the word “bells,” while Harjo’s repeated use of the phrase “she had some horses” and variations thereof gives her poem poem its incantatory effect, while also deepening its central philosophical conceit of what things are the same and what things are different.
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Poemwithrepetition, #Spring
Apr 7, 2017 Free Verse, NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Sweet-Folk
©April 7th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
A rickshaw. Daughter and I.
Late afternoon in Pune.
Bags with boxes of sweets
Rich, swooning mango squares
Kaju katli triangles, pistachio rolls,
Laddus, and carrot-halvas, and pedhas.
Perched like tottering towers
Of Pisa in the rickshaw’s back-space.
Diesel-petrol exhaust fumes
Mingle with agarbatti swirling from
The rickshaw-wallah‘s incense-stand
Snaking through the jasmine-malas
Which my daughter and I hold
Like fragrant shields before our noses.
Children sell them on the street
At light-intersections here;
Little boys and girls darting
Like minnows among the
Slowly-flowing, sometimes-paused
Traffic, their faces appearing
At our rickshaw, and their
hands out-thrust, jasmine-laden,
Saying, “Want flowers?”
Schoolgirls and schoolboys, walking
Like shoals of bright fish
In colorful uniforms, heading home
From afternoon-school, neat and unfazed,
Laden with books on their backs,
Chatter like magpies, their plumage
Shining in the early-evening sun.
We reach home, pay the rickshaw,
Go upstairs, narrate our adventures
To mother, aunt, grandmother.
I say, “Oh, and I bought all these
Sweets for you, and for others.”
I turn to look for them.
They’re not there!
We forgot them!
Mortified, upset, I sit down,
Shrug on a philosophical attitude,
Like a sanyasi‘s mantle,
Try on a casual voice, and
Say, “Well, whoever finds them
Is welcome to them.
Let someone else enjoy it!”
My daughter consoles me;
She knows I hate losing things.
My mother, wisely, refrains
From telling me I should
Have been more careful.
I hope, hope, hope …
Then, the doorbell rings.
Opening the door, I see a gift:
A man standing there with our bags –
Our rickshaw-driver!
“I drove all the way home,
Then saw this, and drove back,”
He explains, handing them over.
Simple goodness shines
In his sweat-beaded face.
Our joy is manifold:
We thank him profusely.
I want to hug him,
But knowing it would
Embarrass him, I say,
“Stay, and have a cup of tea!”
He declines, but is grateful
When we hand him a cup of water.
As he leaves, I press
A box of pedhas into his hands.
“No, no,” he protests. We insist.
He is pleased. Accepts.
That night, visions are bright,
Swirling like fragrant jasmine
And heady agarbatti fumes.
The taste of milk-pedhas
And the sweetness of good-folk
Linger in dream-memory.
I savour it for a long time.
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This is my submission for Day 7 of NaPoWriMo 2017. The idea was to write a poem about something fortuitous, or a fortuitous poem, arising from linking events or objects.
I chose to write the former, about an actual fortuitous occurrence.
Tags: #Fortuitousness, #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Serendipity, #Sweets in a rickshaw in India
Apr 6, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Three – A Tableau
©April5th/6th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Child on his side, heaving,
Dust, and chaos, an acrid chemical.
Within, all goes silent, but
Pain roars through him like
An express train.
Like a fish on the sand,
His body heaves, he tries to speak
Struggles to breathe,
Bewildered by the attack.
His lungs fill with foam,
Like a sea surging inward.
Ami, Abi! Ami, Abi!
Man races through suffocating air
Searching for his wife, his children,
And stumbles upon their bodies,
Arms flung out, eyes gazing skyward,
Still as birds in a painting.
Time loses its hold,
People blur into nightmare shapes,
Someone puts an arm around him,
He wails aloud, an animal sound.
He sees the boy on his side,
Gasping on the sand, a stranded fish.
The man stumbles over to him, strokes his hair,
“Breathe, child, breathe, I’m here.
Hush, all will be well. Don’t die.”
The boy’s eyes
Fill his vision, like a planet
Coming closer. Here is horror,
Here is comfort.
Far away, you click through your FB feed
Reading, writing, and finding
News, outrage, horror.
Hooked on fear, you shake if off,
Click on a video of cats taking a bath,
A momentary respite, a smile,
Like a hand parting dense rain-clouds,
And you feel better.
How nice! You can laugh, or weep,
– what a privilege!
Then you go cold.
You see an image –
A child on his side, gasping for breath.
A hand grips your viscera,
And you struggle against grief,
You feel a net closing
Around you.
Your own child is safe,
You remind yourself, but
The net traps you,
As you struggle to
Take in air.
Why is it raining indoors?
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This is my poem for Day 6 of NaPoWriMo2017. The prompt was to write a poem about one thing, using different perspectives.
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #SyrianChemicalAttack, #ThreeViews
Apr 4, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Plateau and Quietude
©April 4th/5th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
A plateau of bald rock
At the very top of Wright’s Tower
Lies back like a woman
Baring her midriff to the sky
On a quiet beach.
She breathes quietly.
The trees encircling her
Whisper sweet nothings,
Turning light into leaves.
A hawk wheels patiently
Far above in the sun-beaten
Rain-saturated sky of Spring.
We cross the highway,
My dog and I, two wanderers
Taking a known path,
Seeking the unknown.
We reach the woods.
Green-gold slippery shadows,
Daffodil-yellow sunlit paths,
A burst of quietude –
These are ours today.
I walk, hoping for sudden
Red flash of fox, or
Grey-brown dart of coyote,
Holly runs forward and back
Looping around me, hoping for pursuit.
An impudent squirrel, semaphoring insults,
Or rude rabbit, flashing its behind
As it taunts her, will do nicely.
She slices through the green wood-light
As it parts neatly
In her canine wake.
We see nothing that we seek.
Just a pair of loud, proud geese,
Walking confidently towards the pond,
Which, rain-swollen and ready for turtles
Makes room for them,
The water trembling in the light
Like a vision in a sweet dream,
From which I would never want
To emerge.
Holly is cautious;
Geese are loud, belligerent
Hers is an exuberant nature,
But geese worry her;
Of course, she’d never admit this.
She looks elsewhere, casual
As a girl walking down a city-street
Hoping to not be noticed.
The geese pay no heed,
As they slide into the water
Honking like mad rickshaw-horns.
We leave them behind,
Rippling the water into green-gold silk.
Holly lopes up the slopes,
I follow, sometimes stumbling.
The Tower looms in the distance.
The gravel path gives way
To dark earth, squelchy mud,
Soft pine needles, leaves.
A sudden movement scatters them,
And we see young, striped snakes
Skittering away into the undergrowth,
Vanishing at our approach.
Tenderness floods me.
I am grateful for this glimpse.
We climb up the hill,
Reach the tower, sit on a rock,
Watch the traffic move far below
On the improbable highway:
Two shimmering metallic snakes
Flowing in two different directions.
I shudder at them.
My dog pays no heed.
She is of the Moment,
And the Moment is Eternal.
The silence of mid-day is broken
A single bird-song questions the air,
But there is no reply.
I try and forget the things
I always remember:
Rising seas, melting glaciers
Punishing heat, dying animals,
Plastic-swollen seabirds,
Parched snakes, ailing bees.
How could all that be
On a day such as this?
I push that reality away
And seek these woods,
Knowing that illusions exist,
Contradictions collide.
I grieve the loss of all
That I’ve yet to see,
And the world is vast.
But for now, my dog and I
Reach our plateau that,
Lies like a woman
Baring her midriff to the sky,
And I lie on my back
Right there, and watch the skies
Wheeling around me, the rock
Sunning herself, solid and quiet,
The trees whispering to us,
And my dog panting
Quietly by my side.
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Today’s NaPoWriMo Day 5 prompt was to “write a poem that is based in the natural world: it could be about a particular plant, animal, or a particular landscape. But it should be about a slice of the natural world that you have personally experienced and optimally, one that you have experienced often. ”
Tags: #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #walkinthewoodswithdog