May 11, 2016 Light verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Diverse
Di-verse
©May 10th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The deadly spectre of duality
Has quite overtaken my halting verse –
‘Twould be far better if plurality
Were awakened to stop it from being terse.
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Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Diverse, #Poetry, #TheDailyPost
Dec 21, 2015 Original Poetry
Plastic Angels — Ten Haiku for the Season
©December 21st, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Lights blink on and off
A tangle of paper and tissue
Such innocent dreams!
Darkness pivots on light
Panic fills waiting houses
Cheer bursting its seams.
Not of this place, nor
This ethos of gift-giving
Shrug on your disguise.
No, we don’t believe.
Weaving our own myths and tales,
Yet, we soothe your lies.
Plastic angels sing
Animatronic reindeer,
All declaring “Hail!”
“Buy!” shriek the adverts
“Make the US great again!”
And greed prevails.
Rudolph’s bright red nose
Is a beacon in the dark
Funny songs abound.
Yes, yes, jingling bells
Red-white, blow-up Santas swell,
Rising off the ground.
The beast slouches, yes,
But under the weight of what?
Miracles, you think?
“Look!” she cries out, “Look!”
Above, a light rises, bright
Below, humans blink.
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Thanks to Andy Townend for hosting Poetry 101 Rehab every Monday! Here’s my first entry, for the prompt, which was about this season.
Tags: #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #Poetry, #Poetry 101 Rehab, commercialism, greed, Holiday cheer, holiness, plastic angels
Dec 17, 2015 Original Poetry
On the Road to Perdition
(Prompt: Camouflage; Poetry Day 9)December 17th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
He stands at the corner
And they drive right on,
Or stop, pull up windows,
Lock their doors, cautious
You see, because … well …
Because …they’re … cautious,
And it’s good sense, right?
Not knowing what
Lurks in the empty space
Before them, in the
Shape of one they don’t see,
Because they are blind,
All blind, driving into the
Blinding dark of denial,
They drive, tanks full,
Mouths full, chewing on talk.
And the man they cannot see
Stands, reflected in the sky
Which approaches them,
So fast, so close — who brought down
That blue emptiness before them?
Or is it a cloud? Yes, a reflected cloud.
See? There’s no one there!
Staring straight ahead,
Eyes fixed on empty air,
Perhaps viewing empty dreams,
Speaking into cell phones
Texting their loved ones,
Sipping designer lattes,
They drive on, these rich ones
Empty-eyed, empty-souled
Empty-hearted, full-bellied.
Unaware, uninvolved,
They drive, while he blends
Right into the blue sky,
Into stiff brown trees.
Trees, aging ballerinas,
With arthritic hands,
freezing cold, stand cold, cruel,
And he blends, a broken man.
Like a thin growth of forest
He stands, eyes wide.
And he blends.
And they drive.
The scudding clouds,
The bitter steel and concrete
Of a bridge to unease, these
Smile for him, as he stands,
Unsmiling and alone in islands
Of light, and circles of sun.
And the sign he holds says:
Could you spare some change?
Homeless veteran, need food.
What he does not say:
Can you see me?
Can you hear me?
I am homeless. I am lost.
I am homeless. Tossed upon
This life, did not ask to arrive.
Yet, here I stand, stranded.
Will you give a moment
Of your time? A hug, perhaps,
Better still, a dime?
At least a smile, for I am here.
Can you see me, car-people?
Can you hear me?
What he doesn’t say
You will never know.
For you cannot see
You cannot hear
You cannot be
Where he is, or who he is.
For you have blended
Into that darkening sea
Of unpersonhood,
And you have dissolved,
All humanity gone, lost
In dull resentment, lost
in indifference to yourself
He stands, silhouetted
Just for a moment.
While your car becomes sky
Then, shoulders slouched,
He walks on, his sign
The mark of his own
Personal Calvary*
(And you won’t see him).
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* The use of the word “Calvary” is symbolic here (I do not wish to offend anyone’s sensibilities).
Note: “The Road to Perdition” is a phrase that is far, far older than the movie of the same name by Sam Mendes.
Tags: #Camouflage, #Mask, #Poetry, #Writing 101, Calvary reference, Day 9, Homelessness, not the movie!), Sign, The Road to Perdition (the phrase
Dec 14, 2015 Original Poetry
Dog and Snout and Door, or, Unreasonable Sense
©December 14th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
If a picture paints a thousand words,
I shall paint Her straining, pointing
Sense of smell, Her mystic Nose;
Knife-bladed, full of delicate velvet,
Wet with warm canine intuition,
Her Nose sketches out landscapes
Full of squirrels and raccoons.
And Her Nose, mapping
Topographic incongruities
And atmospheric pressure,
Leads me straight into the door.
My head connects.
Strange swim of stars and birds
Swarming around head and bursts
Of sharp sensation, a whack of
Reality across my snout!
Ah, see those Feet pad surely across
Landscapes of dream and desire
Snout and feet that hold dim
Yearning memories of a calm Mother.
Memories of warm mother’s milk, and
Squirming bodies of fur — squealing
And squeaking memories.
Now, detecting butter and cheese
With impeccable precision, the Nose
Leads her straight to me.
See her hold on the world.
Her implacable hold, full of
Bitter resentment at Authority.
The world careens, galactic core
Glistens and beckons, but
The Nose holds steady.
See how that squirrel jumps
From its hilly hollow of logs
See how it logarithmically
Scales the senses, and makes
The Nose leap for a dream, as I follow
And slam face-first into the door
Leading to a world where logic
And magic marry and produce
Leaping birds and flying frogs —
When they sit, they stand, almost,
When they jump, they fly, almost.*
My nose grows, a bulbous fruit,
Full of outrage and tear-filled
Indignation. Such indignity
When I slammed into that door!
And across the vast region of Nose
My senses detect alarm and
Despondency, and a dejection
Of dog-Tail.
Forgiveness, the function
Of love and understanding,
Makes herself scarce, then
Returns, a bride, full of
Shy reluctance at the threshhold
But willing, willing to endure.
For love conquers all,
Even a whack on the snout
By leaping Door,
Arising between Canine and me.
I shall now begin to paint
That picture of a thousand words —
Or perhaps, as a concession
To contrite Canine (contrite as concrete)
Only three hundred and fifty-two words
Unreasonably inviting sense.
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*Reference to a round we sing in my family:
What a queer bird the frog are
When he sit he stand, almost
When he jump, he fly almost
When he sing, he cry almost,
And he ain’t got no tail.
Hardly, he ain’t got no tail.
And he sit on what he ain’t got, almost.
Tags: #Poetry, #Writing 101, Dog-Nose, Door, Fun, Human, Not-quite-nonsense poetry, Stars and Birds, Topological Contemplations
May 7, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
Ruminations
(Not too earth-shattering or terribly original, but what I thought of today)
©Vijaya Sundaram
May 7th, 2013
It seems so obvious, somehow, when one puts it baldly, thus: One has to have a meaning, a purpose in life. If there isn’t one, find one. If we cannot find one, look elsewhere. If we still cannot find one, create it. That’s it.
If the meaning and purpose come from a place of emptiness, then one’s actions are empty at best, and harmful at worst. That’s where we get the Dzhokhars and the Tamerlans. That’s where we get empty men with hungry souls emptying their weapons into innocent and hapless people. Adrift without meaning and purpose, the empty ones fill their emptiness with rage, religion and false notions of honor. Killing is the ultimate worst expression of that emptiness.
If we act with mixed motives, our lives will crumble, and we will create confusion in the lives of those around us. No one will benefit in the end, and all of us will be unhappy. I did all this for them, how come they don’t appreciate what I do? is the question that haunt those who act with mixed motives. Or: I don’t mind sacrificing my needs for others. Really! Confusion and anger come from these, and ultimately, disappointment and bitterness.
If our motives are clear and obvious, and we are not working only for our own benefit, but for the benefit for all, our lives will be the richer. As a great soul once purportedly said, “What you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.” Interconnectedness is everything in the web of our lives. Self-expression and service to others work only if both come from a place of joy and love. Clarity is the result.
If we work with purpose and true motivation, and we are doing it from interest and a willingness to learn, and a willingness to be vulnerable to failure, our lives will be the richer, and so will the lives of those around us.
If we act from moral strength and purpose, and our actions are real and obvious extensions of our intentions, and there is no self-aggrandizement detectable in our actions, our lives will reflect that. And inexplicably, others’ lives will be affected — positively.
Meaning and purpose germinate in such grounds as these.
It is the job of teachers and parents, and of the policy-makers to help create a world with meaning and purpose. If, instead, we create a generation devoid of true self-hood, but made up of selfishness instead, we are committing societal suicide.
Create meaning. Help and hold each other as we cross the treacherous terrain of existence. It’s in the reaching out and the holding that we find the poetry of living, the art in life.
Ultimately, a true artist or poet does art or writes poetry for its own sake, because it’s beautiful and because it makes her or him happy. Artists or poets don’t look for rewards or recognition (although they wouldn’t refuse it if it came their way). They bring others pleasure, but they do it unintentionally. They come from a place of truth.
Make your life a work of art. Make poetry. Make truth. Make love happen. Make the act of living, both for yourself and for others, a beautiful thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Clarity, #Life, #Love, #Poetry, #Truth, Art, Beauty, honor, interconnectedness, meaning, self-expression, self-hood vs. selfishness, service, Teaching the young
Feb 10, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
I am fascinated by angles and curves. (Why was the realm of mathematics such a closed book to me when I was an eighth-grader, bored and maddened by all things mathematical made mundane by well-meaning, but muttering teachers?)
Pythagoras’ theorem and the puzzle of Pi (can’t get the symbol on this thing) enchanted me, always. I understood both, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out how those Greek cats got to both core understandings.
Then, I come downstairs to re-heat some coffee and cudgel my brain into some semblance of alertness, and what do I see on the dining table? A book on mathematical reasoning left there by my husband, with a page opened to my very favorite topics in geometry!
It really is all about squaring the circle — so magical!
Somewhere out there is a perfect place, a folded space that contains every shape and non-shape, every number and non-number, every sound and all silence, every color and non-color.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Circle. In ever-widening circles, we swim upwards towards a blind understanding of our earth-bound selves. And we reach for the radius that will spin us around our galactic core, and we hold on desperately, inching towards that still point, the centre of it all.
Ah, that was one good cup of coffee! Smack!
Tags: #Poetry, coffee, folded space, mathematics, pythagoras, squaring the circle