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).
_______________________________________________
* 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.
_______________________________________________________
*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
Dec 9, 2015 Original Poetry
Morpheus Dreams of Sleep
©December 9th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
I sift dreams, and drift through souls
Bringing stasis, wafting through
That place where poppies grow,
Whose redness, like blood,
Makes me nod, and nod,
But I never sleep.
I ache with desire for sleep.
I search, adrift, through worlds
Seeking sleep.
I cast my nets far,
And capture stars and ride the orbits
Of planets, and swim through space,
Seeking sleep.
Making myself small,
I fall headlong into human time,
And fly through their tiny,
Powerful lives, so full of fury
And so full of grace; I fly,
Seeking sleep.
And then, I reach your bed.
You lie awake, lost to all, lost to me.
Your eyes are full of moonbeams.
I am ensnared. I approach.
You don’t see me. You are elsewhere.
I cannot shake you.
I stand beside you, spellbound.
Dreaming with eyes open,
You lie on your bed, and weave a cosmos,
Expanding galaxies of voiceless dreams
Larger than a cranium, larger than
My cloaked, moon-dark self,
Larger than the edges of all that’s known.
And the threads pull me towards you
Like a lover pulls with the moon with her blood.
I see you, and I desire you,
Weaver of spells, my keeper.
For now I know
Why I didn’t find sleep —
I hadn’t found you.
You spin worlds, and I spin headlong
Into them, spiraling into
Quiet breathing, flow of air and blood,
And you draw me within you.
And I find what I seek: Peace.
And the power of you, your sleepless
Dreaming mind, your clenched griefs
Your love of sleep, and of me,
These pull me, and I, Morpheus, helpless
Like a leaf in a current, zigzag towards
Towards the shore of you,
Seeking dreams in you.
You see me now. Your eyes widen,
Draw me in. I am home in you,
Come to rest at last
In the curtains behind your eyes,
Poet of my sleep,
Dreaming of me.
___________________________________________
Tags: #Love, #Writing 101, Dreaming, Morpheus, Poetry Day 3, Sleep