May 14, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post Photo Challenge

Photograph©Vijaya Sundaram, January 29th, 2016 (At the New England Aquarium)

In response to The Daily Post’s Photo Challenge:  Face

Vis-à-Vis
©May 14th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Let me see you now
In the light of the glimmering water
Where fish swim swiftly, surely,
Like sparrows in a backyard, but we
Shall out-swim them, shall we not?

Let me see your eyes –
Inscrutable and bottomless
Full of sliced light, shimmering,
As you gaze at me, back-lit by blue –
I could drown in them.

Let me see you now
Face to face, clearly, not darkly
What do you see, my friend,
When you see me?

Do you wonder what I think of you?
Or, could it be that you dream
Merely of swimming free
Far from here, from all these eyes?

We shall face them all together
Standing face-to-face
Faced by the enormity of our fate
To be forever watched, seen, admired.

– Quick, let’s turn our backs on them all!

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Tags: #Face, #Face-to-Face, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #TheDailyPrompt, #TheDailyPromptWeeklyPhotoChallenge

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

May 1, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

TRIGGER WARNING AND DISCLAIMER:
This is a very sensitive topic for many school-going teenagers, and may not be one you want to read if you’ve been in this emotional place.
And no, I have NOT been in this place, but I’m very empathetic to those who have, because I taught teenagers for eighteen years.

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

Blade-Run
©May 1st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

The word makes her shiver
As she reaches for
A shining thing to
Ease her endless pain,
Upend her blocked days,
End her numbness,
Make things flow
Smoothly, until
They’re blocked again,
Until the scars shine
Like smooth roads,
Shiny and pale,
Where a river might
Once have flowed,
Until it’s time to once again
Reach for the shining thing
To ease her endless pain.

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Tags: #Cutting, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Scar, #TeenageAngst, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt, #TriggerWarning

Apr 30, 2016 Acrostic, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

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

Spiral (Stairs)
©April 30th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Slowly, step by step by
Perfectly curving step, our
Intuition pulls us upward
Reaching, breathless with desire as we
Ascend, for the apex, where the
Luminosum dwells.

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Tags: #Ascent, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Spiral, #Stairway, #TheDailyPost, #TheDailyPrompt