May 12, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

Photograph@Vijaya Sundaram, 2007

Wormhole
(Survival by Chance)
©May 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

To reach its goal, sperm swims upstream
Poor little salmon, bursting free from
The urge to be washed away.
If it’s lucky, it’ll survive.
And then, if we’re lucky,
We shall see the light of day.
If not, meh, no big deal.
Someone will emerge from that
Moist dark tunnel, fighting all the way,
To breathe in cool gulps of new air,
Shivering and naked, but alive,
Human and whole, and save the world
Or perhaps, destroy it. 
Our future is dark, and we see darkly
But perhaps, we shall find meaning
And purpose, and oh, a wormhole
To wriggle into and out of,
To start out again, anew.
____________________________________________________

P.S.  I know that photograph is not of salmon, but still … it’s fish! 

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt:  Survival
Submitting simultaneously to dVerse for the first time.

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #dVerse, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost

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.

_________________________________________________________

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Diverse, #Poetry, #TheDailyPost

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.

__________________________________________________

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.

_____________________________________________________

Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Stroll, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt

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.

___________________________________________________

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.

__________________________________________

Tags: #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Shadow, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt

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.

_______________________________________________________
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.

___________________________________________________

Tags: #Hope, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt

May 3, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt:  Abandoned

Abandonment
©May 3rd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

An old road leads to a locked house
And in the old house these abound:
Lost hopes, lost spoons, lost socks
Lost dreams, lost children’s ghosts,
Lost lovers’ bliss, lost songs,
Lost days, lost nights, lost maps,
Lost directions, lost memories,
Lost knowledge, lost ambitions,
Lost desires, lost skills, lost laughter,
Lost tears, lost scorn, lost anger,
Lost grievances, lost bitterness,
Lost chances, lying broken
Outside its door, and lost people
Lying forgotten in the lane
That leads behind the house.
And in the creek that flows nearby,
At the silvery bottom, under a rock,
Lies a key, thrown carelessly
By someone lost in the mists
Of myth-time, walking a grey horse
Into a place beyond our ken,
Every sigh falling down the rider’s lips
Turning into pebbles, as it hits
A glass-crusted ground,
Leaving a trail  behind
For anyone who might care to
Find him, and beg him
To return to the land of
Flesh and blood.

________________________________________________________________

Tags: #Abadoned, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt

May 2, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Music

Inheritance
©May 2nd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Most days, with the scent of coffee
Came music in the mornings.
My mother’s voice, bright as oranges
Bright as the green of a neem tree, as it
Wove through the morning hours
And filtered into my consciousness
As the Madras coffee dripped
Through its filter, aromatic and charged.
And I was saturated with richness,
As I grew from baby to toddler,
To child, to teenager, to adult,
Unconscious and unaware of what
Was shaping me, and my life.

This, her music, lives in me.

And now, the music of our days
Lives through my love and me,
And filters into our daughter’s
Blood and bones, her daily life.
And this, the music of her days,
Shall live through her, and
Spread like sunshine in a land of fog.

__________________________________________________________________

Tags: #Music, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt