The Song Tree

It is been all blue since I left the green
and the green has now left me
to look for fresher breaths

Autumn’s masterpiece, I belong
to the artists who flock around
hoeing, ploughing and raking
through the seasons
all because of a mad need to sow

The suns I have swallowed
nest in me
heirloom rings of my age

No longer do I need to be leafed
to feel beautiful
A naked tree is truth
The naked truth is me

A song I hold dear rings clear
A song without fear
A song with all our fears
A song stolen from earth
and snatched from the heavens
A song inside a bit of fluff
A song arresting the floating fluff above
that comes visiting with the breeze

A lonely song that brings succor
to the poet below wandering
with ink in her veins

A poem that becomes a tree
A tree that becomes a bridge
A bridge that the song travels on
The song that is you and me

Silent. Evergreen.

(c)Reena

Aflame

When night spreads herself out
like a sheer drop from the balcony,
floats weightlessly in the breeze
and then resurfaces to show off
her brilliant gold-lined eyes,
I cannot sleep

for she tells me that to be seen amidst
all that darkness
I must wear the stars
even if they are all suns
which scorch and burn

I stay up to show her the scars,
the singed skin
the ferocious imprints of hugging a wild sun once lost to me
the molten lava
that streams from my eyes
and she calls me beautiful

(c)Reena

Amnesia Dell

Come away to where amnesia lives
It is a dell beyond a far away hill
With a sun and a moon to give us light
and warm rooms to lodge us on rainy nights

There are stalls with hearts on fire
Reach in, give them yours
and get the one you desire
Then you will see things my way
and why I have always been running away

There is a map folded carefully for you, see
It shows just the street where we will meet
But if you go back ever, you will forget where you had been
Amnesia town and its streets will no longer be seen

(c)Reena

Whispers

 

Gritty cactus stalks rubbed by the desert
make up convincing desires
and uncertain, my heart drums out
undulating rhythms

Sand slopes over sand
ever pristine
burying its predecessor with finesse

A conversation gentle, familiar
but not the words
I thrill to its cadence
It is language I knew once
It kisses my heart
yet misses my lips

I want to join in
but the sand has settled over the voices
The silence is another desert
I am a lone cactus
listening to an almost song
swirling around my roots
slipping over purple milkweed blooms
coming home scented

Even though my leaves no longer fit into the fading shadows
my emptiness is soothed
(c) Reena

Poetry: A Safe Planet within a Terrifying One by Reena Prasad – kitaab

Reena Prasad’s poems have been published in The Copperfield Review, First Literary Review-East, Angle Journal, Poetry Quarterly, York Literary Review, Lakeview International Journal, Duane…

Source: Poetry: A Safe Planet within a Terrifying One by Reena Prasad – kitaab

NaPoWriMo 6/if

If…

A tough terrain that stretches yesterday into tomorrow is where ifs thrive as burrs. There are some on the faded jeans I treasure. If you could pull out the ones you wear upon yours, give them away, cross a few continents and wait for me in that narrow lane between the middle-class homes where the tulsis grow like weeds and pink roses bloom like teen love, we could hear the gong once more and if the gray hairs and the loose folds could be erased by the receding waves of time tugging at the blankets of moss that grow over human joys, we would still be smiling, brave and earnest. We could walk back a year in a step and cross the words that parted us, crushing them under our shoes if .. if ifs were our tomorrows, ours to hold, to cherish and to let go, there would be an if before every breath that left in search for yours and before every breath that returned vanquished, bereft of warmth

©reenar

 

NaPoWriMo 5/Sun and shade

Sun and shade

The gentle art of melancholy
is to see “print as light and white paper, shadow”
There is an end, beyond every horizon

The Wandering Jew thrives though pot bound
The moss rose blooms where it is flung, but we practice
the gentle art of melancholy

Too much sun within, to meander out of the soil
The sea salt, like happiness leeches out of underwatered pots
There is an end, beyond every horizon

too faint to discern too vivid if dreamt, the rays converge
and we are parchment, then flame, then ash, simple soot black. Behold
the gentle art of melancholy

Breeze-blown paper caught by a nib, sails without a ship
Ocean depths of promises, undying hope a never ending misery
There is an end, beyond every horizon

Sun, the cross, cosmic omissions, shade,
the lovely creepy crawlies, spring flies in with
the gentle art of melancholy
There is an end, beyond every horizon
©reenar

 

refer
“Light & Shadow by Anne Waldman

 

NaPoWriMo 4/looking at loss

Sparse white hair
shining pate

a grin
with gaps

endless walks
but the wind stilled

stunned
I stumbled
but he will not hold me again
©reenar

NaPoWriMo 3/ Pebbles

Smooth pebbles under my feet
and in my heart
you fill my sieve when I skinny dip my senses
into time’s muddy pool

Inheritances never forgotten
never realised
have accumulated over mindless existence
There I am in my mother’s eyes
as she looks at hope through a window
newly chiseled by a man
walking in from several storms

And then time rippled its skin once more
shook off the fireflies hovering over
bright eyes
and poured black tar over the living

It filled the lungs of an era
with the hatred of co-existence
and brought forth babies dipped in vengeance
fed from breasts that heaved in rhythm to chants of revenge

At the pinnacle of it
carried over by the butterfly effect of  waves
dashing against cliffs of shores far away,
a land lies wasting
Its trees
singing of blood and ignorance
kills sparrows with their apathy
and below them
hungry powers wrestle for dominance

I am still in your eyes, mother
refusing to be part of the scenery
to be a fringe element in this landscape
to be a visual representative of an era
that promises nothing but delivers hate
Unbidden

Let me look hard at the faint outlines
in the distance
conjure up the mountain passes
too feeble to be the truth
and cross over the bridges of time
Time after time
till I find the parallel river that matches my inner one
Till then

tell no one, Mother
that you conceived me on your own
and I named myself Hope
©reenar

NaPoWriMo 2/where are the answers?