Corvine Re-lease

She leapt from rocks to boulders
her swift brown fury
reverberating under hill slopes
her tongue jabbing craters in them
I stared fascinated
Impudent- she hurled
muddy cadavers at me

I embraced the nearest blades of grass,
gurgles of loss trickling into my ears
images of an uneaten bowl of life
while she spewed primal rain abuses
kicking silt over my prostrate form

Earthly beings loomed with sturdy knives
I began to hope- a graffiti among several others
She howled with laughter as they ripped
my earlobes off
and chopped at my writhing wrists

Freed of my human form
I watched her scrub clean
the greedy semen from her entrails
while she sprayed me with fresh blood

I hovered out of habit
reluctant to leave my mortal skin orphaned
She thrust out a watery foot
and dislodged it from the black pool
Amidst its final whirls and swirls
I flew away to caw a warning
©Reena Prasad

Phailin

For all my friends facing the cyclonic storm
October 2013

Phailin
Beloved of Saturn
Turn your face from the fisher folk’s boats
There is sinking sand in their souls
and little in their huts
Sapphire jewel of the ocean
You rise and throw the fish about
ready to share your power but we are weak
Jeer at us but do not wreck a shore
A trembling land waits,
each gust is someone’s last leaf
No instincts left to show us a rabbit hole
The bare-chested are not brave, merely poor
fleeing from your powerful hiss
The first tree has fallen and a breath has flown
Some boats may never come home
Kids play in the little spaces between refugee mayhem
Lose your mighty heart Phailin
Abandon your deathly gifts in the sea
©Reena Prasad

Rain the love out – for The rainbow journal

It doesn’t set in easily
the feeling of being free
a flurry of flutters
a dropping of loose feathers
a shrug of the resilient ones
stirring up a chirrup of talkative emotions
Once it blazes in
a desire erupts in ecstasy
A suicide point beckons
setting up a secret rendezvous
An odd warmth seeps in as drops drip
stealing the sealed heat of cells they linger over
one that comes from letting go
of the blood rain washing down the putrid layers
piled on by seasons of drought
while the red heat evaporates the pain
and the rain for once thirsts for the desert

©Reena Prasad nov 24 2013

The uprising

Gleb Goloubetski
‘Autumn Breeze’

Watch me as I rise
drinking up the black liquid of night
The wind in my golden stalks

He lies on the lapping surface
to carry me away
from all that is dark

The bamboo in my basket of love
is covered with its swan flowers
The sunlight, my last sheath

I see his handsome heart
and the big stakes driven into them
but I am not a frail concept, I am Earth

out to reclaim my colours
from the paint and word palettes
of plagiarist beings called artists
©Reena Prasad  26th May 2013

Forgotten green

 This poem was written for a international poetry contest by Xpresspublications and won the 5th place

Jungle tale

Let me start
from where you broke off
the bed time tale of a hunter and prey

The fawn in an illusory wood
looks up
A tiny tail-stump quivers

The forests waits
at the edge of a water-hole

Dusk slithers down a tall tree
a gleaming snake-skin hangs there

A distant rumble becomes a roar
the gurgling stream whispers no more

No lilting tune lightens the gloom
A hush of sleep descends on all

Unseen fears nestle in hanging vines
a hungry breath murmurs
down the spine

Hairless palms are suddenly wet
who is the hunter?
who is the prey?

The ape guffaws
he sees stripes
not the polka-dotted flowers

Tawny eyes gleam behind toad-stool huts
a twitching tuft emerges
from undercover

Night has slipped
and fallen in fear
Courage drowns in its black tears

The tiger springs
before you can think
of newer tales to color credulous dreams

©Reena Prasad 18th April 2013

A year of dust – a night of rain

 

In the settling dust of cricket- song evenings
when the school books tumble onto beds
and satchels are shaken out
when the flickering brass lamp throws moving shadows
over the framed pictures of deities
and on children playing on straw mats
when the old woman fans herself
with the literary supplement of the newspaper
chanting verses from her favourite scriptures
waiting for the power to be restored
When the raindrops plop into a bucket
finding the gaps in the red terracotta roof
and hearty frogs croak late into the sultry night
and the road becomes a brown shallow stream
A torch glow precedes each passing shadow
street dogs hold baying competitions
and the hungry cow moos for her grassy supper
It is then that an artificial world within recedes
letting the senses to soak in the night rain
and petrichor replaces machinery fumes
and life seems worth all its struggles
©Reena Prasad 4rth April 2013

The fort

I am a jagged rock on which the day plays
sometimes a calm morning melody
sometimes an aurulent dusky symphony
Green hanging boughs tease these shores
lapping waves knock on my closed doors
As the day recedes into a horizon afar
I remain in my groove, watching night
spread her mellow blanket of stars
©Reena Prasad 20th May 2013

The desert came to tea

The desert peeked over our balcony
flapping like a voluminous sari hung out to dry
she howled and beat her fists on the dusty glass
yelling at us to let her in
We sat sipping hot tea, watching her wanton dance
from behind the fibre glass windows that never budged
She hurtled her brown self at every peep hole
tearing off clothes, paper and birds with equal fury
smothering gaps with her grainy hands
We never let her in yet it seemed
there was more sand than sugar
in our tea.

©Reena Prasad 7th April 2013

A desert sings

Here they travel on lanky beasts
swaying clumsily in a row they go
A range of brown humps in the breeze
sandy their paths where only cacti grow
They stride in silence, the sun dips low
What they think, we can never know

Travellers of the desert, nomads to the core
A long necked train, they follow the sun
Crinkled by the heat the Bedouins of yore
burst into Nabati – a verse home-spun
They reach an oasis, the pace drops slow
The al iksir it holds, we can never know

They seek only the liquid troves
though gems sparkle in the fiery dunes
The life in their veins, it makes them rove
The sun and the sand strumming their tunes
They thrive on joy where nothing grows
what their wrinkles etch, we can never know

A new night sings as another day dies
of old men in turbans, their drums on a sling
As life stirs under the darkening skies
beating their hearts out, they dance in a ring
Vibrant with rhythm their music flows
what the camel sings, we can never know

©Reena Prasad 13th May 2013