FIVE POEMS BY REENA R

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’s Poe Tree, Mad Swirl, etc. She is also the Destiny Poets UK’s Poet of the year for 2014 and one of the editors of The Significant Anthology released in July 2015. She was adjudged second in the ‘World Union Of Poet’s’ poetry competition, 2016 and won an award for poetry in 2016 As ‘You Like It International Poetry Contest’, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare. She won the Reuel International Prize for poetry, 2018.

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

Posted on April 6, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME0

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

Posted on April 5, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME0

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

Posted on April 4, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME0

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

Posted on April 3, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME0

NaPoWriMo 2/where are the answers?

Where are the answers?

What if they forgot to ask the girl if she could sing?

Would her music cease

Would she no longer knit their afternoons into a mellow sunset?

Or would she burst into her own song

singing as if the summer would never end

And the house would rattle along to her sound

Eager to hear every note that came unbidden to her lips

Which song could be better?

reenar ©

Posted on April 2, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME2

Napowrimo 1/ 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

Posted on April 1, 2019 by BUTTERFLIES OF TIME

FIVE POEMS BY DR. SANTOSH BAKAYA INCLUDING A CONCRETE POEM AND AN ONOMATOPOEIC ONE WITH A MESOSTIC

Internationally acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu (Vitasta Publishers, 2014),

Dr.Santosh Bakaya is an academician -poet-essayist- novelist-reviewer-Ted x speaker, whose Ted talk on 'The myth of writer's block' is quite  popular in creative writing classes.

She writes a much appreciated column in Learning and Creativity.com, Morning Meanderings, and is the recipient of the Reuel International Award for her long hundred page narrative poem,Oh Hark !(2014). 

The Setu international Award in recognition of her 'stellar contribution to world literature '  2018(Pittsburgh ,USA),
The Universal Inspirational Poet Award (Ghana government and Pentasi B ,2016),
Bharat Nirman Award 'for brilliance in the field of writing' , 2017 

The First Keshav Malik Award ,2018 ,for 'her entire staggeringly prolific and quality conscious oeuvre' in fiction, prose and poetry are some of the  other awards that she has received . 

Her other books are :

Where are the Lilacs ?(Poetry,Authorspress, 2016 )

Under the Apple Boughs (Poetry, Authorspress, 2017 )

Flights from my Terrace( Essays, Authorspress, 2017)
 A Skyful of Balloons [ novella , Authorspress , 2018] 

Bring out the tall tales (short stories with Avijit Sarkar,Authors press, 2019)

Only in Darkness can you see the Stars :a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (Vitasta , 2019)

ALL RIGHTS BELONG ONLY TO DR SANTOSH BAKAYA

The hens in their pens

Time it was, when in my prelapsarian haven,
the sounds had  not lapsed into a cacophony,
when it was only the cicadas chirping frenziedly,
and the noisy hens skittering madly,
cackling in tones of agonized entreaty,
as they were chased into their pens.

 Then came autumn!
Those copper leaves,
so much a part of memory, bid adieu to those branches
 to which they had clung with a fragile resilience
swirling to the ground to rest on a new home.

On another half- clad tree,
sat a sad little robin singing its autumnal dirge,
while the autumn leaves fell on us one by one,
singing elegies, tinged with hope. 
The hope of resurrection.

 
A long way away from home,
I recall how I had roamed its vales and meadows,
inhaling the fragrances of my snug universe
singing happy verses.

But, now, death parades,
uniformed and starched,   strict-looking.
 Chinars mourn, willows weep, and parched lips
 mumble incoherently.
Narrow slits, they say, were eyes once
looking at the horizon,
 will the sun rise today?
Hens once robust and feisty
are again chased into their pens,
as agonized entreaties rent the air,
 but none hears them,
as freedom pens its swan song stooped,
and stooping more every day
under a leafless, skeletal tree. 
 

Near the bougainvillea creeper

 I glimpse a rosy- cheeked toddler being pushed around
 in a perambulator as the young mother twitches
his tiny sunhat in place, looking at him fondly,
as he sleeps in the warmth of the sun- sheathed pram.

Now and then, she glances nonchalantly
at the gardener tying the vines,
trimming the fence, and noisy kids
quickly dropping their rubber balls,
hopping towards the spunky squirrels,
skidding, squealing and screaming.

 She sits on a bench under a tree,   
 its leaves sprinkling the two 
 with shots of vivid sunshine.
She sighs a blissful smile,
pushing a tendril of the baby’s hair from his face.
‘Aww’, she gushes as the child smiles in sleep.
Then she beckons her fond husband,
 standing  near the lily pond, who rushes to her side,
leaping towards her in two quick strides, 
bending down to kiss the child,
glowing with ineffable pride.
 The morning is almost over,
but a poem is born right there
near the bougainvillea creeper.

In the Shadows

Life sits in the shadows , multi- tasking,
oft crocheting bibs for her babies,
to burp and puke on,
smoothening them on her sturdy knees
[not the babies, but the bibs! ]
with massive sighs of satisfaction ,
 often jerked with rib -ticking laughter .

 
The babies tumble around, chortling and lisping. 
She soothes the colicky ones in hard hitting indignation,
smiling at them over her spectacles, gives a dry chuckle,
happy that her expostulation prevails. 
 Oft peering down with a serious judicial expression,
 having a mind to tweak their noses,
 sometimes their desultory songs and eloquent silences
 soothe her; sometimes speaking in a lofty strain,
 gives her a high. A sigh escapes her lips, and often
 her lightness of tone masks a faint alarm. A pesky refrain.

She looks at the quivering fingers of an emaciated woman
trying to make the buttons and the buttonholes
of her child’s tiny shirt meet.
When she fails miserably, Life wrings her hands,
gnashes her teeth
and looks away.

 

The walking stick

A soggy old man, groggy with sleep, heads towards his tumble down cottage.
His eyes look around frantically for his lost calf; ‘ho! ho! ho!’  He bellows
some vague impulses, some wayward fancies, some laughable absurdities,  
and recurrent revelries, whirl in the mind of this soggy, old shepherd.
A twig between his chipped and discolored teeth, breathing
in sporadic bursts, eyes fixed at a beetle, predator-like.
There is the gentle, soothing tinkle of a goat’s bell,
his eyes light up, looking around frantically,
a benediction springs to his lips,
easing a crick from his neck
rubbing a nervous tic, he
gropes for his stick,
finds it, then he
hobbles forth,
stumbling.
Shouting   
happily. 
Baba’,
bleats
the
calf.
Says
he,  
ho
ho
ho
ho
ho
ho
Ho
ho
ho! 
ba
ba
ba
ba
says
the
lost
one
in
joy.  
 
 Whiplashes of time

Those waves, ah those waves!
Why does he keep going back to those waves?
 How they sparkled, how they gleamed,
as though a rose-tinted dream
played peekaboo with his senses,
 confusing his tenses, mauling his syntax,
vexing him with a teasing chuckle,
cocking a snook at grammar
 vanishing into the surfing foam,
with the force of a hammer.
 Those rippling waves, ah those roaring waves!
The waves, waves, waves.

Overhead, a shard of a once colorful kite,
 brings a smile to his wistful face.
 It does some sort of a belly dance
 as a blustery wind lashes it with all its might.
 The summer sun of an alien land scorches him,
singes him, bringing him thoughts
of those waves, waves, waves.

So far away from home, his ears still
ring with melodic murmurs of the waves
 that he left behind,
 whiplashed and uprooted,
 his name still etched on that ancient pine tree. 
The waves, waves, waves.

Reminiscent of the tintinnabulation of Poe’s Bells
 they chime rhymes of the melodic times. 
‘What a world of merriment their melody foretells ‘.
The waves, waves, waves. 

He ploughs on With lacerated feet

Grimy hands, Appealing

Trying so hard To                  

Walk on, parchEd lips

Mouthing an eaRnest plea
for water
through parched lips.

Every year he is richer by one more wrinkle.
 But, oh, where, is now the merry tinkle
of the waves, waves, waves?
 Now, he hears only a threnody
of the waves of the River Lidder.
The waves, waves, waves.
  
How they roared, roared, roared,
billowing, surging, swinging , breaking, curling,
rushing, purging  , swelling , whirling , uncurling
undulating , rolling ,pell- melling  
The waves , waves , waves …..
He misses the way they kissed his feet,
beating, crashing bashing, thrashing, lashing, dashing
 the waves, waves, waves.

SEVEN SONNETS BY DON YORTY

Don Yorty is a poet, educator, and garden activist living in New York City. He is the author of two previous poetry collections, A Few Swimmers Appear and Poet Laundromat (both from Philadelphia Eye & Ear), and he is included in Out of This World, An Anthology of the Poetry of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, 1966– 1991. His novel What Night Forgets was published by Herodias Press in 2000. He blogs at donyorty.com: an archive of current art, his own writing, and work of other poets. A new book, Spring Sonnets, was published by Indolent Books in August.

Don sent me seven and asked me to choose five - but as they are all wonderful I go on with all seven. I am not even changing the numbers he has given them in his sequence as they too matter.

All rights for these poems rest solely with Don Yorty.

42

In an abandoned web the baby twined

with its tail held fast in the twisted strands

which I gently tugged at with careful hands

not wanting to break the delicate spine

of one so young. When I went in the house

my father said, “Your cat is killing snakes

in the cellar.” I went straight down to shake

that cat and say, “A snake is not a mouse.”

It doesn’t help though. One was real little

like the one I’d just saved and crawled away

but the other one’s beautiful length lay

severed in three. I was glad it was still

but oh the upper part opened its jaws

and coiled into a howl that wouldn’t close.

58

Is it necessary to rhyme, to be

nailed down to a certain philosophy?

Inside the walls of our skulls are we free?

What if we didn’t have the eyes to see

or ears to hear a word? Would we feel thought

like sun on a cold day? The squirrel shows thought

scurrying up the bark where a smart moth

has thought to camouflage itself. I fought

with myself walking in the woods afraid

my thoughts were not that good and saw clouds float

in the sky above and the spring below

where bubble rose and broke into the air

as if some giant in the earth belched out its

breath after puffing up and saving it.

96

Where there’s a will there is a way. After

her stroke my friend Bernadette could no

longer write by hand, but lo and behold

she could type. Her words continued after

all, books full, and since then she has written

one of my favorite poems. Into the world

the unborn baby pushes and uncurls.

Bernadette learned to walk and read even

the subtitles in La Muerte de un

Burocrato and La Ilusion

Viaja en Transvia. Real visions

come to poets who know we suffer and

die, yet pain can begin more than it ends

healing hurting bones and making thoughts mend.

98

Mother is cooking marinara sauce

for three of her grandchildren who’ll soon go

back to college. It’s a darned slow process.

At Uncle Al’s I picked each tomato

as ripe and as red as it gets. Poaching

peeling slicing Mom finally dumps them

in the pot gasping heavily struggling

to breathe, maintain her heavy self and

ease the necessary doing, chopping

onions and peppers. The garlic and dried

basil I shopped for are thrown in bringing

all of the spices bubbling side by side.

To condense taste to its essence simmer.

Mother proves Love can satisfy hunger.

99

Reading Vygotsky I want to write down

a word I’ve not heard of—involution

Hmmm? Is it opposite evolution?—

and look it up later. Notebook open

I planned to jot it here but instead wrote

a sonnet about Mother and forgot

the word in marinara sauce. Sonnet

finished, returned to Vygotsky, the word

is still right there where it remains unknown.

I won’t write it now as the solution

but will remind myself with a poem

adding words I don’t know or want to know

better: concupiscence, algorithm

exegesis, satrap and amalgam.

107

I created the world with the first word

I spoke connecting myself with the real.

Then I could even close my eyes and feel

what I’d set in motion with the first word

I had spoken. Perhaps it was water

or maybe a snake or the sun coming

through the branches. Right now I’m creating

because I was told to by Bill Kushner

whose hands look like sandstone with sudden flecks 

of pink in them, asterisk fingertips

or constellations of stars. From his lips

he commands, “Write,” and my hand starts to, quick

blurred. It’s difficult to see what’s living.

Is it from the dead we get our bearings?

112

This day fits my unquiet spirit. It

is cold but not cold—No, actually

it is. Still the pond melts. You cannot see

the fish. Can’t skate or swim in it. And it

is raining ice. Can’t take a walk. I’m sad.

Help Dad stack logs he cut last year and split

dried out and ready to be lit. I’ll sit

by the fire and read Hawthorne instead, glad

at the thought of it. Glad too the crows move

on the snow, peck through all the garbage Dad

left them this morning. ¡Feliz Navidad!

Joyeux Noël. Cake! Shrimp shells! Caw! Caw! Who

knows the words to articulate the we

and excite the good will in us and peace?

Next up is Santosh Bakaya, then to be followed by Daipayan Nair, Jagari Mukherjee, Aakriti Kuntal and others.

FOUR POEMS BY KASHIANA SINGH

Kashiana Singh is a management professional by job classification and a work practitioner by personal preference. Kashiana’s TEDx talk was dedicated to Work as Worship. Her poetry collection, Shelling Peanuts and Stringing Words presents her voice as a participant and an observer. She dips into very vulnerable and personal contexts but also explores the shifting tectonic plates of the world around her.

She is from India, now lives in Chicago and bridges the miles by regularly etching her thoughts. She is a regular contributor to different poetry platforms like OnMogul, Literary Yard, Best Poems, Narrow Mag, Modern Literature, Women’s Web, Tuck Magazine, Spillwords, Visual Verse and with Scott Thomas Outlar. She is in the process of gathering her second collection of poems.

All Rights Reserved by Kashiana Singh

1.

Petrichor

Feather droplets, uncertain and fickle

a standing ovation, trickle by trickle

Rooftops lay flat against a tiptoe dance

a gushing lullaby to an apocalyptic trance

2.

Noor

I know a Noor
She is seventeen

She is insatiable

She is possessed

She has likes and dislikes

infinitum

She does not like legacies of silence
Relishes eggplants and turnips her grandma makes
She does not like perfumes
Her fury is aroused by a wild musk
She does not like mirrors
They break her infinite shadows
She does not like wild drinking
Her vice is dipping rusk in chai
She does not like hesitation
Her voice arouses a vocal soprano
She does not like being told, instructed
Heartbeats pierce through her like an easterly
She does not like flowers, plucked
Has an addiction to wild dandelions
She does not like corsets, or foolish tales, retales
Unburdens her seat at every table
She does not like riding pillion
Unfettered she seduces the wind
She does not like nightly ceremonies
Virgin’s milk, plaited hair long discarded
She does not like permissions
Her entrails pound a curious honey

I know a Noor
She permeates every minute

She is painfully present
Her eyes opal daggers

Her neck a river
Her breasts surging mystery

Her legs anchored to her ship, as

her impetuousness sails full throttle
into a churning sea, pulsating with
likes and dislikes

She is not
a weekend edition of feminism
She is a noor*

*noor – holy soulful light

 3. 

Barefooted they walk

Incredible India
coffee book canvas
multi-dimensional presence
of
giant statues
loud bells
louder chants
dawn prayers
marble upon marble
lights upon lights
wasted wax
from devotional candles
sits forever in stubs
like dwarfed men
who light them
bargaining with
a God
advertised in plenty

barefooted they walk, timidly
discarding shoes, of all shapes
sizes, colors. shoes of all people
hindu, muslim, sikh, christian, old
young, bard, barber, woman and
girls, even the bad ones who force
honor killings, or rape, and shoes
of gays, lesbians, hijras, that have
flowers embroidered in nauseating
colors, shoes of all caste, creed
and shoes of those with no shoes
barefooted they walk, careful
feet tip toe through the last lap
of cleansing rituals, they stride

through mehndi and monkeys
into their hanuman’s temple
through an aromatic langar
served in halls of Bangla sahib
through her virgin Sacredness
into the heart of their Church
through an elevating qawwali
cathartic at Hazrat Nizzamudin
through blossoming petals
of their famous lotus temple
through quietness of Buddha
into Lakshmi Narayan’s abode
through the spiritual largeness
of Akshardham illuminated at night
through the urging sandstone
into the calm of Jama masjid

barefooted they walk, timidly
they walk the length and breadth
of a mutilated constitution, the
north, south, east, west;

an entire country circumcised

of courage
an entire country in disguise
meanwhile

I disappear to find solace

in the prize winning
essay, I once wrote, it was titled
‘unity in diversity’

4. 

Eleven Photographs

Rain rubbing shoulders, a hesitant earth

Earthworms, mud froth, flooded ant homes

A grave, firma turf bursting forth, snails crawling out in remembered commonness, fungus in smells and scents, deadness erupts, scavenging sourness in cilantro leaves, a rain rustling through thickets in a drunken rustling| I am

Flipping through a story teller’s album|In an attic that smells of corpses| Translucent years on paper|Crumpled taste of dinner table discourses|Every page has remnants| Hesitant footprints and fallen scabs| Bloody ketchup stains| A grain of coriander| Weary threads of frayed wool| Rose petals mocking| Lifetimes and lifelines concealed in glue dots| An alchemist at work| Chess boarding time on album pages|

I stumble upon photographs| There are Eleven|

Opaque images of me in my mama’s kitchen|

There are Eleven

One

I am stirred kitchen pot of bubbles

a melancholy rehearsal on repeat

Two

I am an orchestra of wondrous gathering

of spices, flavors and secrets

Three

I am an alchemy of yin and yang

of rum with chocolate syrup

Four

I am a pitcher of iced panna

a keeper of syrups and sour

Five

I am a bowl of mango strips, lemon

an explosion of poems in teaspoons

Six

I am a page of sonnets filling empty water sips

a winner chuckling with conviction of taste

Seven

I am a bowl of milky crusty caramel

of melting sadness on burnt edges

Eight

I am an avalanche of fudgy brown bites

of humming into an overflow of sweet

Nine

I am an earthen platter of pickled promises

a crisp bite supplements prosaic day

Ten

I am a texture of overcast ginger and garlic

of diminishing appetites in bland curries

Eleven

I am an anthology of preserved scars

of surprises lingering on cleansed palates