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?

Napowrimo 1/ Living with infidelity: Instructions

Living with infidelity: Instructions

Disown bodies
Disown tea rituals
Live outside every temptation to ask

Tune out of conversations
Be deaf to hints
Function at medium levels

Breathe in air but not scents
Sell all albums to the raddiwala  one at a time
Change the photos in their glass frames

Be ready
Be gone
before you go
©reenar