मेरे घर का पौधा मुझसे कहता.......

Prompt #28 - A poem in less than 50 words titled "What is the Weight of the Word"

क़ैद 

उमीदों की हाराकीरी से 
रंग हैं इस रिश्ते में,
शाम को बोतल खुलते ही 
लफ्ज़ उछलते हैं, कहर से। 
फिर भी नफ़रत, तुम से नहीं, 
उस बोतल से हैं,
जो तुम्हारे हरकत बदलते हैं। 
खुद को भुलाने की आदत,
ज़रुरत से, ज़हन बन गया है,
की खुद को ढूंढने जाऊँ तो,
वही लफ्ज़ घेर कर, क़ैद 
कर लेते हैं।

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Prompt #29 Prompt - The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place

It is 1984, as predicted they
Are coming
Breaking into our lives, our bodies, our souls. 
Hurry!
Our mature whispers of youth, remember?
In the dim light of the lamp I loved, over that
despicable glaring tube.
I am looking for an escape.
I run into mountains that open into deep vales
Lying in the bed beneath a billion 
cavalier stars I hear the gurgle of the gentle river
And the cold water soothing my soul 
lulling me to sleep.
As, I ever so gently rise up, up and up
And I was creating poetry for the misunderstood
Of the incomprehensible genre
Where nothing tied into another
And you accusing me of scripting stories,
Just as I unspooled the lies and tampered
With all the evidence you had saved for later,
That was dangerous knowledge and 
You never agreed
You said I was seeing things, a schism in the 
Midst of this inspiring sanity.
I am finally gunning for experiences.
They are good, don’t neglect them
Wade in them, through them, reach 
The shore of balance, where life stops affecting.
But, if it isn’t a cold dead place,
Why does it feel this way?
I am drugged and restrained,
But it doesn’t feel like help.
All I need is someone to understand
Understand, that I am not a cold dead place.

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Prompt #31 - Use the words "song," "forgiveness" and "boondoggle."

I am that…..

I am that lone grazer, you see on 
that mountain top,
and wonder where it came from, 
where it would go back to,
who does it belong to, and what does it feed on,
companion-less, without complaint.
I am that overturned beetle, unable 
to survive but under your light
and struggling to find my legs
and wings again.
I am your humble servant, who you 
don’t think needs to be fed,
an anathema to your lofty existence
and an invasion on the food cooked
to feed you.
I am that song that you refuse to sing 
for it would mean begging forgiveness
and that is a boondoggle you dare not
attempt.

The 2nd one on the same prompt

A decade-

I am looking for those verses
From last night,
That I had repeated to myself
At the edge of my slumber.
Later today I found them back
but in your poem, 
And even later I remembered how.
Last night, skin on skin,
When we were asleep 
They transferred into your images. 
And now I am left without my song,
That you stole in the sorcery of your moves.
You pleaded the usual forgiveness, whistling,
“aaoge jab tum saajna, angna phool khilenge,”
The decade old machination
Played over and over and yet I am fooled.
And with all the accusations has flown time
And we have arrived at a strange middle world,
Greetings colliding goodbyes,
Birthing with funerals and watching
our generation faltering and winning.
With each ripple, I’ve felt the graces of the
Current grow stronger and the beginnings
Of ravines being etched on your nurturing 
Landscape and me a plant nourished in that
Earth, swaying in winds that turn black to 
grey.
But roll up your sleeves, as I have mine
There is more to boondoggle
A couple of more decades
Or three, if you please.

________________________________________________________________ Prompt #032 - start the poem with 'And then the thunder said......'

I.
And then the thunder said,
Lightning struck, and left me behind,
Rumbling, chasing her in rage and fright.
We were born of the same womb, me and her.
We go together, with her striking ahead of me
Lighting the way or burning, as she pleases
And me, striving to roar to her rhythm, and then,
Hushing beneath metaphors.
II.
And I said to the thunder, I know how that feels
Shadowing incandescent lights, a voice unseen.
I too have had a sister driven by such passions.
Too full of herself and her untouchable grasp.
But I tackled myself, I tore upon her hurried soul
Rained hate and disgust, until I was no more.
No more the person I thought I was.
And for long nursing the scar as my muse.
III. 
And thunder and I, heard in silence each other’s cries 
The ringing hollow. The piercing sound after an insignificant
Fight. The pitter patter of a ceaseless rain. 
And washed by the blazing rays of light, realized
This constant song and dance of nature.
You thunder, a part of the divine and me all of humanities plight,
Convincing myself of the worth of my ineptitudes. 
How right it would have been, in this one platform of chances,
To simply choose love instead,
To let someone be the light for that is what they are,
and me be the sound and the voice instead.


_____________________________________________________________ Prompt #033 - Free Write Week

The point of it all…..😊

I do what I do; but whyI don’t know. Or I do?
Some silly things that engage me.
Profoundly.
And important things that distract along the way.
Because every time I open the door 
To welcome the laundered clothes, 
That will repeat the cycle, of being worn,
Washed and ironed again;
I multiply forty more years
With the days in those years, 
And I say why not, it is perfectly okay, 
To continue to do what I do……..

The 2nd poem on the same prompt

Night-

It was beautiful outside
As I stood in wait.

I ran into night.
As it too came bounding,
Like it sensed I loved it.

People are afraid.
Telling me tales of a dreadful darkness.
An abettor or a victim? No one’s sure. 
Of its black ears, of what it hears.
What it can spill, scares them.

I too am a seeker of the light.
But I love this cozy wrap-up. 
A pause; creation’s sigh between
It’s exhausting work.
A perfect primitive plan,
When we say, stop this keen caravan.
Listen and just breathe.
Welcome all your yearnings. 

So I call upon my untethered thinking.
My unfinished companions,
Motionless beside the bedside lamp.
And best of all, lie in wait for
A beautiful day right after.

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Prompt #34

'You get into a cab. When you step out, the year is 2038. You're the same age, but everything around you has changed. Write a poem about what you see, and what goes through your mind.'

2038 – a story
The view is bigger and wider. Rounder?
Stretch time and eyes take
their own to adjust to a different vision.
Strange hologram advertisements. 
“Convert to a humanoid”, one read;
amidst humanoids owning the streets. 
A freedom, humans barely knew. 
A list of techy giveaways, another declares.
Nothing means anything. Never did without you.
You appear in dreams more easily.
How will I find you, here, with people sparse,
lusher trees, smooth velvety white roads.
I am the same. Would you have converted?
Like these one-legged and five-legged vehicles. 
These building with crooked designs
Made of glass and what is this new metal?
Odd here seems the new even.
Energy saving, they explained. 
Last time, I had depleted all of mine
keeping my stubborn head turned away.
refusing my eyes the sight of you,
or inhaling the beauty of your face.
Gulping the frozen coffee cube, 
exiting the café, I went back looking
for the address I had once called home.
It looked glassy, blue and modern.
Modern, does that word make sense?
I entered the porch and turned leaden,
when I read ‘moved to Mars’.
I dreamt there of the only meaning I had known
of stretched times – our moonlit nights. And now this,
moving of space. Your merciless
karmic revenge? The intensity of hours
pressed on me; standing there. And those
strange noiseless devices – scanners? Recording
sniffles, reading sighs and counting tear drops
when suddenly at an unlatching I turn, what seems
like an open door and a beckoning white beam………

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Prompt #35 'Something I Don't Want you to Know About me'

Those three words
For long, I went steady with two at one time,
One that turned me mute, and that other made me quiver.
Three words have always chased me, yanking at my heels
but never really bitten, as I waded through with my steady two.
“Can do better” rankled in my every report card. 
But ‘shyness’ hushed me. ‘Fear’ shushed me. 
One painted pink on my cheeks and other hung from my eyelids.
So I remained in the land of ‘can do better’ and never did anymore. 
See, schools engrave over your soul and mark you for life.
I felt my (in)ability shone on my forehead and those egos 
held me tight and led the way. 
Until one day, I deceived ‘fear’ and swam onto 
the other side. ‘Shyness’ dripped throughout the shore 
unable to carry on.
I sighed with relief, but they haunt still.
Keeping me always- half awake, always half still, 
half asleep, halfhearted, half deep, tied to rocks, a swaying balloon
half wild, half tame, never complete, never full
half sure, mostly unsure. 
So I remain, a half worker with half the work done, 
an okay wife, an okayish partner, a doubting friend, 
a thereabouts mother. 
And when the seductress of words walks in,
I keep her at a distance, afraid of letting my soul
stir in deep waters afraid of what she could say
and where she could lead me,
filling blank pages with imperfect rhythms and 
broken meters. 
Half able. But still a perfect wrong human. 
Who of course, ‘couldn’t have done better.’

And it is all alright.
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Prompt #37 - 'If I believed in Magic'

That curious charm on your wrist,
how many evils has it kept
away from you, just
whispering behind your ears but
watchful of the sparing dark dot 
there, and those kohl eyes 
on your baby, darting it seems
little arrows on daring demons.
How do you manage
stringing lime and green chillies
over your door against people
you say are friends or is it
aimed at family, warding off 
their evil eye on your bounty,
that is only but another life.
Prayers that are spells and 
every offering, a desperate
cry for protection against a
hostile distrustful humanity
watching your every move
as you plot your next and live
between exhales.
This carefulness while
believing all that is dark
suspicious of the light, is all
the magic you ever learnt.
These guarded doors of your
mind, do they not sense this blinding
magic transforms, turns you into
all the horrors your efforts 
have been fighting to avoid.
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Prompt #38 'Poem in the form of a letter to any person living or dead'
(written for my husband this one won a Rank #4. APM doesn't usually rank more than 3 best poems but I think this week saw some heartfelt letters by the poets and therefore 6 poems were mentioned in the ranks).

My short letter of gratefulness

Sweetheart,
my dearest of all things dear to me.
I still remember that exquisite day
when a piece of moon entered the room
to sit beside me. And me spontaneously
wanting to touch the radiance, to be
sure it’s real and you so were.
I remember silently praying
this I need for life, like
breath for the living.
And I pray every day to make
sense of this graciousness.
This you, pouring your love and
this me, yet blossoming and growing.
From then to now, you laugh at my
transformation. But love can’t be frozen,
like water it flows from a tiny trickle
to a vast sea; now into children, daily homework,
insurances, EMIs, ageing parents, diet control,
exchanging interests, and so many
discussions on life.
Was it possible then for a girl to be
so struck, I was a moron. I am an
idiot now unable to control this ceaseless
flow of life, if it weren’t for you my stoic sage.
The only words needed to be said are
thank you. And that is how my love has changed.
My only regret, you slowed me down.
made each moment inspiring
each word important, so I strung one
to the other and found poetry. And suddenly
when I note cricket scores and you recite poetry
I know then, I love you is useless.


My 2nd poem on the same prompt

प्यारी माँ,

कैसी हो ?

बात चिठ्ठी लिख़ने की उठी, तो तुम्हारा ख्याल आया।

सोचा मन में जो अजीब बातें मचलते रहते हैं

उन्हें पन्नों पे उतार कर शांति पहुचाऊं।

वैसे तो दिनचर्या में ही उल्छी रहती हूँ

दीदी और भाई भी अपने उलछनो में, शायद।

कमाल तो यह है कि, जिन के साथ एक

घर में पले बड़े, उनसे मुलाकात क्या

बात तक नहीं होती आजकल।

तुम्हें दुःख हुआ सुन कर ?

टूटे हुए पत्ते हैं , अब

किसी आंधी में फिर मिलेंगे ।

एक था बाबा का गुज़ारना।

चेतना सिर्फ मौत ही क्यों जगाती है?

बस अपने आप को कठोर बनना

सिखाते हैं, ताकि कोई दर्द न

महसूस हो। यह आजकल की सोच है।

फिर कौन ही किसके लिए होता है

एक पुराने दसतूर से वाकिफ़ हुए हैं बस।

में भी मैसेज लिख कर डिलीट करती रहतीं हूँ

बेहपरवाही का भारी गुनहां मेरे पे भी हैं।

ख़ैर, तुम हम तीनों को माफ़ करती रहना

और ऊपर से आशीर्वाद भेजती रहना।

बाबा से मिली? मेरा प्रणाम उनको भी।

कभी सपनों में आना।

तुम्हारी बेटी।

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Week #39 Prompt 'Ordinary Poem'

Ordinary Poem 😀

I looked around hopelessly
for my small forgotten notebook
it had to be somewhere.
At last I found it beneath the
chest of drawers, hibernating
besmirched in dust bunnies everywhere.
Those tricky, black and fluffy monsters
love the underside, especially of my bed
where my maid’s mop fears to tread!
Now I decided to snare them into, the ritual
of Diwali cleaning, but before I got them all
some answered the call of the wind.
I grabbed the oppressive window
closed it with a thud, but let me not say
anymore, the damn thing was covered in dust! 
Wait a moment, I’ll continue some more
next time you dust, think of a travelling atom
containing sightings from the entire universe.
Yes, if me and you were done with, we too
would turn to dust and someone, would 
wipe us away, somewhere in Los Angeles!