Micropoetry Month: Nov 2017: #18

November 18, 2017 ~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 9 Comments

Micropoetry Month Yesterday’s experiment with tanka impels me to take it further with ‘Tanka Prose’. Like a haibun but with a signature tanka instead of a haiku, this is an excellent form to stretch one’s imagination and word crafting skills even further.

Try this or any other form of micropoetry and share using comments or Mister Linky.

Without Words

For days we climbed together. Sometimes they disappeared into the mist ahead, sometimes they lingered on the edges. I could always hear their whispered voices, even as the sky slipped closer. But now the words are gone and I have been orphaned by the need to speak. In their soundless absence, the river is just one ceaseless motion, the moon in it is just a point of reflection and this moment is both big enough to fill the universe and small enough to tremble as the cold wind rushes by. What will the birds call me if I do not have a name?

on the other side
of the horizon-
the eagle’s wing
dips into
the silent dark

Could’ve Been So Easy

September 27, 2016September 27, 2016 ~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 25 Comments

in shallow concrete recesses,
forfeited by the morning sun,
strutting on sills and railings,
he coos to his pigeon brood,
a clamouring assonance
permeating the hot air,
as they drop like grey leaves
around a fistful of scattered grain;

I wonder if he knows glass from steel,
if he can tell spice from herb,
poised on the ledge, on the edge,
trading secrets,
with the lady from 2B,
or that couple from 16A,
breathing our air,
living our lives,
he carries my heart on ashen wings,
the canopy, a nameless memory;

way above is the last palisade,
beyond it the open blue,
only once I saw him fly up to that gate,
to watch the eagles floating
on ever rising waves,
the fear heavy in his bones,
his voice bare, only once,
his wings brushing the cheek of freedom,
it could’ve been so easy;

sometimes I see him steal a glance,
his breath catching mid song,
here he learnt to walk on asphalt,
lord of the dark urban morass,
but that unmarked vastness
with the soaring wings,
feathers tumbling along unmarked trails,
an azure cage from which
there was no escape;

my heart snared in his trembling claws,
trading secrets, living our lives,
tumbling along blue unmarked trails,
love, it could’ve been so easy.

For the midweek prompt at Poets United: Caged and Free

Freedom

October 30, 2015 ~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 45 Comments

That was the day we freed the flowers.

you said they would fly
through the crack
between night and day,
float on ancient voices,
preserved in watered silk,
hold hands with infant stars,
and trace the bulge of the horizon.

we found them glass slippers
and glowing satin wings,
they slid down early sunbeams,
and stretched their arms to touch
the moon’s waxen cheek;

they talked to eagle patriarchs,
cursed with the black necked cranes,
shuffled in and out of time,
drank rainbows through straws
of marmalade haze.

And then one day, they came back.

came back to the shackles of the
slimy green pond,
to the angst of the hump-backed frog,
back to the frozen view
of a decaying tomorrow.

we saw them, they said,
the dead, the graves, the coffins, the pyres,
from the clouds, they look so little,
like all the children had died at once,
and they were leaving,
with no beauty, no scent, no touch of silk,
to carry with them into the endless night,
they were leaving alone
with no calligraphed petals,
no satin wings,
to escape into the light;

chain our feet tight so we can persist,
we’ve come back to bear your dead.