Jun 2, 2016 Ramblings and Musings, The Daily Post
What Makes Me Angry
June 1st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
- The abuse of children, whether emotional, physical, or sexual
- Slavery of any kind
- Racism, and the self-congratulatory attitude of those born to the dominant race in whichever country they are in, who believe they have a divine right to lord it over others
- Sexism in any direction, men to women, or women to men
- Ageism. The worship of youthfulness and the young in most countries has reached absurd levels. Those who are older feel cast aside, disrespected, disdained.
- The use of religion to justify narrow prejudices
- Abuse of power by those who have it, be they politicians, parents, teachers, friends, or siblings
- Wealth inequality, and those who believe they earned their wealth with no help from those who helped make it happen
- Wastefulness (including my own)
- The justification of inexcusably evil acts of war
- Those who deny that Climate Change is Real, and therefore do NOTHING to help save this beautiful earth
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In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Angry
Tags: #Angry, #DailyPrompt, #TheDailyPost
May 31, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Bread and Circus
©May 31st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Give me my daily bread and circus!
Give me my gaudy show!
Show me that life’s got no purpose,
Save what I already know.
Keep me ignorant and stupid,
Entertain me all day
With pretty pink hearts and cupids,
While our world burns away!
Show me that life has no meaning,
But for what t.v. shows.
And while we sit around screening
Reality, life goes.
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In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Circus
For some reason, my poem reminded me of the line “Here we are now, Entertain us, ” in the Nirvana song Smells Like Teen Spirit .
Tags: #BreadandCircus, #ClimateChangeisReal, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #real life, #realitytv, #TheDailyPost, #Tongue-in-cheek
May 30, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Photograph©Vijaya Sundaram, 2016
Blanketed
©May 30th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Solitary cloud in an empty sky
Empties itself of air
Arbitrary crowd that an empty eye
Empties itself to stare.
Blank is the mind that stares up high
Looking to find a thought
Rank is the mind that looks down low
Looking to blind a spot
Look straight ahead, not up or down
And make yourself quite still
Don’t seek to find, just speak a mind
Whose blankness will not spill.
Blanketed in perfect peace,
You’ll sit in ease and find release!
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In response to The Daily Post's Daily Prompt: Blank
Tags: #Blank, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 29, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Orderly
©May 29th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am not.
I wish I were.
I gaze, longingly
At the ladies I know
Who arrange and re-arrange
And I, stumbling around, deranged
Because neatness and I are at war,
Rail against the disorder around me,
Try all that arranging and re-arranging,
And feel trapped underneath the burden of it all
For chaos primeval rules my world eternally,
And all I can do is pull up the weeds as they spring up,
So my flowers and ferns and trees can rise up to meet the sky.
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In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Orderly
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Orderly, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 28, 2016 Ramblings and Musings, The Daily Post
An Unepigrammatical Diatribe
©May 28th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am unwilling to write a post about “epitome,” because I am the very picture, the very embodiment, the very incarnation of utter lassitude, laziness, mulishness and intractability.
I lie around, the personification of sheer inertia, and view the word “epitome,” with a languid contempt.
Why should I cut short my long day of torpor, with the sun vanquishing my every attempt to be active, in order to wax eloquent about the word? Being the very picture of apathy at the moment, I do not wish to relinquish my role as the paradigm of inaction.
Therefore, I say, and I shall say it till the end of … well, this post, that I shall not elaborate further, in some sort of academic nose-in-the air-kind-of-way, on the topic of “epitome.”
An epitome cuts short my attempts to write epics.
I shall not provide any examples of it. Pooh to the word, I say, pooh!
Goodnight, Gentle Reader!
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Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Epitome
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Diatribe, #Epitome, #Irony, #TheDailyPost, #Tongue-in-cheek
May 27, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Forking Metaphors!
©May 27th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The temptation to make
A metaphor that is profound
Seizes me when I see a fork.
How irritating!
I shall deny this urge,
And prevent its expression.
I shall avoid all forks
That beset me when I
Travel the byways of my life.
I shall not fork over
Any money to those who make
Any bets about my using
Or not using a metaphor
With a fork in it.
I shall spoon my yogurt,
And forks be damned!
I shall spear my food
With a toothpick,
And garden with only
Shovels and trowels –
No pitchforks.
I won’t say forking hell!
No! Nor, shall I ever say
“I reached a fork in the road.”
All I need is to take this
Stupid metal implement
And stick it in some cake.
See?
I’m done!
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In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Fork
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #fork, #metaphors, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 27, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post, Uncategorized
Carping about Carpe Diem (Countless)
(Or, A Whinging about Procrastination and Ennui)
©May 27th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Countless hours go by
And countless days slog along
And countless minutes flow by
And countless seconds jog along.
And still, I don’t seize them!
If I did, I’d have to release them,
And I hate holding time hostage,
Hate letting go of them, condemned
To fritter away the countless hours –
The hours of life after life that I live,
Repeating myself, cell by tired cell
Recreating it all, so boring, so tedious!
Waiting for an end to all this unaccountable
Counting of the minutes the hours, the days,
The years, the millennia of what passes
For this life, when it could be done with
One stroke
Of the pen,
Or one slit
Of the pen-knife!
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P.S. Please don’t be alarmed. This was just a post, nothing more.
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Countless
Tags: #Countless, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 26, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
Grains and Gains
©May 26th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
See her walking the watery fields
Picking grains of rice –
She searches for nourishing ones.
See him sitting on the fiery dunes
Picking grains of sand –
He searches for the shining ones.
May they find what they desire.
Amongst the waters, amidst fire.
There’s place for beauty
And shininess.
There’s place for food
For sustenance.
There’s place for idleness
And being quiet.
There’s place for work
And for moving.
Be at ease,
Be at peace.
Find your grains,
Make your gains.
Be very still,
Find what you will.
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Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt for May 25th, 2016: Grain
Tags: #Daily Prompt, #Grain, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost
May 24, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
The Nightbird Sings (Passing Phase)
©May 24, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The night bird sings a lonely song.
For she awaits one who
Is passing through.
It’s a passing phase, this
Like all the rest of them.
This despair, this elation
This sunny day, this cloudy one,
This happiness at seeing loved ones arrive
This sadness at seeing them leave.
When the time comes to die,
All this will be the memory of a dream.
It’s a passing phase, this
Like all the rest of them.
All that springing, leaping joy
In her blood in her youth
All that intense passion
In his bones, occluding thought.
When the time comes to die,
All this will be the memory of a dream.
So much rage comes and slashes away
At good sense, so much despair
So much anger and sorrow.
So much unhinged emotion drives
Away wholeness, and makes up
The stuff of songs and stories.
The girl who cries into her pillow
And wishes she were dead
The boy who stares self-hatred in the face
And courts Death.
The children who seek the love
Of those around them, and find none.
The women who look for their
Prince, who is off looking
Elsewhere for his true love, while he
Slays imaginary dragons.
The men who seek greatness
And mistake achievement for it.
The women who follow their Muse
And find it hiding in distant lands –
All these will pass through
A doorway into one phase, and enter
A space to be filled, a phase
To round into, to curve out of.
If I could ask for one wish, it is this:
Let me pass away brightly,
Singing under my breath,
Whispering a poem,
Holding my loved one’s hand
At the height of peace
And fulfillment, knowing
All whom I love are safe, and will
Go on, through all the phases
Of their lives, waxing and waning in quiet.
Let them find the same peace I desire,
While the moon waxes and fills
The air with cool silver, and an unseen
Night bird sings her last song.
But if I do die as the moon wanes,
Let me fill the air with my own silver
And radiate with my open arms
An entire universe. Let me in my
Final, dying phase, find my blackbird
While she sings in the dying night,
So I can soar away on her wings
And never return.
For the night bird sings a lonely song.
And she awaits one who
Is passing through.
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Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Phase
Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #phases, #TheDailyPost
May 24, 2016 Original Flash Fiction, Original Short Story, The Daily Post
Dream-Song
©May 23rd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Out of the dust rose Dream.
And Dream held in her palm a flower of darkness, gathering her raiment of chaos around her body. She stood tall and black, full of stars in her pockets, and full of inchoate longing, for she was all alone, and loneliness wasn’t yet born.
She looked around her, saw no one, and yearned blindly for that which had no name.
A song arose in her, full of hunger for someone to hear her.
And Dream sang a song that wound around all the worlds there were and the worlds to come, her song a whispering thread of shining silver that edged the darkness, to light the way for Someone.
Her song held stories that stirred in many minds, stories of things to be, stories of love and death, and suffering and peace.
One day, her song came whispering into the mind of a man who had no eyes to see with. He spent his days begging on the streets, singing a tuneless song about loss and loneliness. Out of pity, people fed him, and clothed him, but they would have no more to do with him, for they feared his misery and his loneliness, for these clung to him like a shadow.
Into this mind, Dream blew her song, and into his lap, she dropped the flower of darkness, and the man who was lonely now knew he had found someone.
And Dream wound lovingly into his world and brought him the gift of seeing into, and beyond, what was there, so that when the blind man lay down at night on the wretched sidewalk where he spent his days begging, he saw stars and a sky that went all the way into him.
And his song changed.
He sang of the beauty of life, of the beauty of love, of his companion whom no one could see. He sang of stars and sky, of the universe and of friendship. He sang like one possessed, and now the people reviled him, saying, “Surely he must be mad, for he sings of things that he cannot see, nor know nothing of.” And they beat him about the head and shoulders, even as he sang.
He cried out at first, but they didn’t hear, so loud was the clamour around him. He sang louder and louder. They berated him loudly and beat him some more. He sang louder still, with broken and bleeding voice, about mercy.
Now, tired of beating him, the people went away, saying, “He is possessed of the devil. See how he sings about that which he cannot know!” They cautioned children to stay away from him, when some, touched by his song, and moved by his plight, tried to go close and listen.
Nobody fed him any more, for they were afraid of the blind man with his unending song. And now, they felt a darkness closing in on all of them.
Bloody and crazed, the blind man sang in sun and darkness, in rain and wind for seven days and seven nights. Now, his song changed, and he sang of blood and war, and spite and hatred.
Dream watched from afar. And she suffered, because she knew what he was becoming, and why. She had no way to stop him, and her heart was sore. For, she had sung to him, and caused him to sing.
On the seventh night, the man died.
The people of the city caused his body to be thrown far from the city gates for the vultures to feast on. They were afraid, and did not know why.
And Dream watched, with quickening breath.
Suddenly, there was movement beside her. She turned, and caught her breath. For there, in front of her, arrayed in gold and red, bigger than the worlds she saw, stood the blind man whom she had driven mad. With smoky eyes, he smiled at her, and held out his hand. She stepped back.
“You came to me,” he said, and his voice was soft. “You sang to me. I am yours.”
“What do you call yourself?” asked Dream.
“Ah, but surely you know the answer to that!” smiled the Man.
And she did.
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Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Dream
Tags: #AllegoricalFiction, #DailyPrompt, #Dream, #OriginalShortStory, #TheDailyPost