Source: Current Issue – Why do I write?
Thank you Sunil Sharma Ji for including this small piece in Episteme, an online interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary & multi-cultural journal of Bharat College of Arts and Commerce, Badlapur.
Category: poet’s corner
The Whale in a Poem
When a poem starts pressing at the keys,
white letters recede into their black armchairs
and curious to know where it will lead
my fingers follow it into the darkness
my thought bag bursting with queries
Won’t it require a few tried twists and turns
a piroutte maybe
a pinch of sea air, a few ounces of humor to create a laugh
and emotion enough to choke a giraffe?
Or perhaps it should try my brand of lovelessness
and dip its hat into a bucket of coloured images
and run its feet through the wet sand
and trample upon gentle flower beds
for contrast?
My eagerness to help
drives the poem further
to get rid of my shadowy fingers
and it becomes a whale
stirring up the ocean mud
spouting up my stale offerings
and breaching magnificient
while I retreat rebuffed
my bag empty
but my screen filled
© Reenaprasad
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Paper Dream
I woke up to find my poems
splashed across the newspaper
The forest ones spreading along the sides
the ocean ones grabbing the centre spot
The bird ones preening themselves
perched on bold headlines
their imagery running wild
From their paper pedestals they smiled at me
like long lost friends
telling me
they made it on their own
I smiled back; relishing their childish glee
my eyes running down and under
When I reached the bottom line
the sun vanished again
“By E. D” said the credits
an old diary, an abandoned house
a lame old story
I woke up but my poems still sleep.
©Reena Prasad
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NaPoWriMo- 8 Clutter
NaPoWriMo 8
Clutter
If I could wrench its obstinate edges free
and careful not to spill its amassed crumbs
gather its unruly flaps
at the centre,
I would shake my heart out
Free it of all its obsessive clutter
and spread it wrinkle-free
to cover the rents on yours
©Reena Prasad
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Dancing over graves
12. Dancing over graves
The poem shot out wings
became a vamp in a feather stole
stilling the breath
before the body could lay claim to it
ran her soft tipped words over erogenous spots
in a ghost that shot red coals from its sockets
and pounced to its feet
She pulled away its covers
jabbing with a supple tongue
at a swarm of Achilles’ heels cowering underneath
The specter now disrobed found a mirror
ogling at its goose bumpy treasures
Scram!
but nothing to fear or is there?
She taunted, she teased, she pole danced around its spine
her impenitent figure striking a pose that lingered
after the night has been thrust into a bookshelf
The ghost in a feeling frenzy
grabbed at whatever came close
opening its loneliest hideaways, un-sutured bullet holes,
and its echoless coulees for her
She dropped her cape, climbed inside and began
©Reena Prasad
Published in the Mad Swirl: The poetry Forum
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Driftwood dreams
Eyesore on white sands
I caught your eye
black rot, lifeless
hurled ashore
by the night gone by
Birdlime me
I blossomed as you carved
Pell-mell on clavicles
of gleaming brown fell
the unruly curls you teased
Madonna of the dead tree
A thousand eyes feasted on me
but you conquered my last limb
and I set you free
Rapturous slopes wait
your slender fingers beg to carve
the tide has brought in
fresh outcasts
My mounds,
too insentient for you to mount
have made me a queen
I am Helen to termite swarms
a brown wreck
of a green past
dreaming of a breath on me
©Reena Prasad
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Profound nothingness
♦♦♦
Words seem banal
A sparrow of sorrow
trapped
wanting to be on the other side
of the closed window
where the sky is a lovelorn blue
and silent
the prison of thoughts
©Reena Prasad 8th July 2013
