Don’t Play Along

The edge of the bed
No more dreams
Too much of giving
The unspent mile hurts

I wouldn’t know
How could I
Gaping at bursts of green
while an ocean bursts
Bring out the bottles, no more time
Soak in the sun, run down the line
They see you sing, they smirk, they drink
then belt out your words
and strum something

It is you they play upon
It is me, your song tells it all
Then they go home leaving you alone
and cry themselves to sleep
All alone

All alone, do you not see
All of us
The way it has always been
The edge of the bed
No more dreams
The guarded mile hurts
Let it go its way
Please
Just the edge of the bed
I cannot belong
This is no life
This is a sad song
®Reena

 

Giving it up

(c) Reena Prasad

It makes me restless: the small pauses in life
A stop at a red light and I slide down through glass
onto the petunia beds
fluid, greedy
not content with relishing them with eyes
needing to feel them
taste me too

So there in the freshly watered soil, I lie
as close as the earth and roots will let me
leaving them no reprieve
but to fill me up with colours and scents
There is a oneness with these fleeting souls
seeing the sky as they see it
wanting to give, give  
and only to give
the essence up to the winds
not in gratitude
but to ensure that I belong here
like the shadows of trees
and the coolness of breeze
and take no more
©Reena Prasad

 

 

Death

Why the wind blows heavy

Can’t you tell the absence of life
no one comes to check up on the egg
or feel the dolor of a wind that carried away
a soul without a silhouette?
A racing gale, a cliff immobile
a nest sits uneasy, a lone egg inside
The soft love jumble
grass, twigs and fluff
rolls round the blue shell
but nothing knocks from within
a most inconsequential moment
love looking to live on
but love is for everyone
life isn’t

©Reena Prasad 12th Dec 2013

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

It won’t rain on you

The sweaty-neck of another summer day
has been washed by the afternoon’s downpour
You could have curled up with a book
watching the trickling drops
and the bird on the line
shaking out the rain from its fluff

A wan sun would have beamed all around
before making way for a cloudy dusk
Boisterous noises of frogs, crickets and crows
settling down into the lap of night
could have made the poet in you sigh once more

The silent night jasmine would have
thrown a kiss of scented bliss
A wet kitten might have come mewing
for some warmth from the arc of light
underneath your door

The night gale would have rattled the chimes
even through your shuttered window
Storms stronger than us need to get their way
like the one that you tried to swallow all alone

but you chose to collect tears in a private pool
ignoring the ones dripping over the sill
growing into circles of love all around
and to keep the sun away forever
and send away hungry, a tiny bob of fur
©Reena Prasad  11th June 2013
♥˜♥In memory of young Nikhil Sharma who left us on 10th June 2013♥˜♥

To be published in “Scaling heights”

The Naga nemesis

Booing at my human form
they hang from the sprawling tree
Their collective jeer of forked tongues
an elongated, red efflorescence
I smell their venom before I feel
hissing breaths flicking my hackles
I stand my slithering ground
as invincible as them in my dream
though Manasa writhes underneatha
and Shesha cradles
in his thousand-headed glory
the frame of an absconded deity
Kaliya floats unperturbed on a black river
grinning as the poor bend and drink
Vasuki emerges from a deserted womb
his mouth oozing slush and brine

The tree trunk uncoils as I toss in my dream
into several more scaly forms
Their offspring wound themselves round my feet
The hanging ones pull me up with ease
Waiting for the inevitable
I watch the crawling ants below
trying to fight themselves to death
while Ananta’s rapidly coiling form
squeezes their life out like popping sweet peas
still chuckling at the irony
as they swallow me whole
and vomit my poisoned soul
to search for a discarded snake skin
©Reena Prasad 14th May 2013

 

Stripped

The heron clutches the edge of an abandoned dhow
a gleam in its eye as a slow ripple forms

Cuddling wisps of clouds edge near
to orange splotches of a sunny prelude

Cold trees turn their spiky crowns
away from snow clumps on grassy lashes

Death breathes down the nearest bare neck
standing a lot closer than sleep

A fallen angel sheds its archaic wings
and hangs itself as a white dendrite

The fake morning glow vanishes
in another swirling white mist

A tree looks pointedly at imaginary blooms
its nudity grabbing at snow flurries.

©Reena Prasad 26th jan 2013

To be published in scaling heights

A winter to forget

A dead rat was swept out with impunity
from under a gleaming car
A news report perished under an album
Fireworks lighted up reluctant moods
in a sweeping display of defiance
In Night’s dance bar,
a whistling wind frosted the panes
White fingers grappled with warm blood
as dead spirits laughed at dying ones.

Stopped hands of the clock froze time
An obsolete December hung from a rusty nail
Brown coconuts grew gnarled in a shed
The new calf scrambled onto unsteady feet
ready to run at the slightest breeze
oblivious to the absence of an old man
who stepped off the time train
two days before the new year
whose ashes still swirl around the tin shack
where he used to sit and smoke.
©Reena Prasad 2nd dec 2013

Call of the sea-2

The sea whispers
loud to them who hear,
its waters writing
within deflated thought bubbles
Of death waiting
beneath the bubbling blue
with foaming mouth
and hungry roars
Waiting for walkers
to tire of their sand castles
sending waves of ocean scents
to wheedle their souls
into deep, swapping games
Sound for silence
Strife for serenity
Air for water
Cadavers for release.

©Reena Prasad 19th Nov 2012

Published in Angle poetry -a poetry journal .