Current Issue – Why do I write?

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.

The Whale in a Poem

Humpback Whale by Medvezh

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

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

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

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

 

Driftwood dreams

Angel of the Shores, Driftwood Sculptures by Debra Bernier,

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

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

Streaming away

 
 
The stream divides the green into two
meandering away from the known
forcing thoughts
to put hands on undefined, slippery curves
to revisit decrepit shelters
to reassess the traps set by the squelchy ground
where the green fades into yellow,
exposing cow-munched barren patches
 

The stream seems to stake a claim
It wants to be the new road
its clear face reflects a sky breaking into chaotic pieces
as feet intrude into its watery hollows
seeking out pebbles to act as footholds
to counter the avalanching thoughts
that find no moss to cling to
as they slip and slither down the muddy banks
away from the maze of daylight’s green pretences
into the Cimmerian haunts of night.
©Reena Prasad 3rd April 2013

Post mortem

 

They promise to lay bare the nuances 
which make some poems belong anywhere
plucked from unknown places
flawlessly put into ingenious spaces
Guides and keys
strip the charm off mysteries
Ripping fragile veils
their hands on some butterfly moments
into which mine too had seeped unaware
tearing out skin and poetic tissue
for  the un-poetic to rummage, pee and shit upon
My greatest fear is of spotting the poet
trying to prevent the assault 
unshaven, naked, dead and unseen
A protective instinct stands up and hollers
A phobia of bumbling fingers groping
and probing the oft violated orifices,
laughing at the mayhem of genesis assails me
as I try to read the inquest report,
face turned away lest I see
a poem’s private parts uncovered
and purple bruises on tender spots.

©Reena Prasad 21 Feb 2013

The cauldron- for lake view

There is always a bubbling poem
within a cauldron called life 

Cherished mondegreens, veiled dulcet whispers
some undeserved gifts, some stolen snapshots
a few essential love swirls within
the caliginous mood of nights
some red fescue and lost fireflies
A potpourri to season its ebullient delights

It simmers over an ouroboric fire
often stamped upon vigorously
yet never out fully
in the shade or sun
upon a little heap of broken rocks
hissing away to the flame scorching it black 

All you need to do is tilt it a little
and a poem flows out.

©Reena Prasad 18th feb 2013