Secrets

 Day-2

NaPoWriMo-2026

Prompt: Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.

Image: Sneha

Balconies hide many secrets. 

The voices from the past sync in their walls, 

sometimes very sharp and sometimes in muted silences. 

The dead cannot speak, but they have left so many 

whispered secrets within that limited space.

Recalling them leads to echoes of heartbreak and heartache

He never could share his piece without fumbling shyly, 

but she was a vixen, breaking his barriers with her sharp tongue.

The little eyes peeping behind the keyhole

would try to find answers to the sessions of wordy duels. 

There were gesticulations and barrages of obscenities;

 The tiny ears burned with unknown semantics. 

Grown-ups can be very ignorant of the pain 

they cause in the little innocent hearts.

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2026

Guns and Roses

 Day-1

Napowrimo-2026

Prompt: Tanka(5/7/5/7/7)

The tanka is an ancient Japanese poetic form. In contemporary English versions, it often takes the shape of a five-line poem with a 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 7 syllable-count – kind of like a haiku that decided to keep going.

                                                                      Image: Sneha

She clicks and breathes spring

Her coast is calmer than mine

Loud blasts of bombs,

Debris at my end, I breathe

Choking on reality!

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2026

I have a Dream

Day-30

NaPoWriMo-2025

                                                                    Video Credit: Internet

It was a wedding season

Some forty five years ago

A young girl was swooning

To a happy and soft melody.

She had no idea 

She was just knee high

That one song left

Footprints on her heart.

Teenage brought her home

They became her favorite band

Every song of theirs

Left an imprint on her soul.

Every scrap book of her friends

Had her penning " I have a dream"

In the favourite song slot

Memories, so sweet and tender.

Ages ago, when she became a mother

She hummed it along with the radio

Lifting her spirits to deal with everything

Life has thrown in her way.

And one day,

She opened her old diaries

Spanning  decades of thoughts

Spread on its pages

There was this song

Especially, penned and marked

In beautiful handwriting 

Her dreams oozed on every word.

Prompt: In his meandering poem, “Grateful Dead Tapes,” poet Ed Skoog riffs on the eponymous tapes that he’s found in a secondhand store, remembering various instances of hearing the band, both live and in recording. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that also describes different times in which you’ve heard the same band or piece of music across your lifetime.

Participating in : NaPoWriMo-2025

The Sunny Days

Day-29

NaPoWriMo-2025

                                   PC:Sunita

Those summers,

Had the same spike

The heat and the humidity

But, they were innocent

Simple, vivid, bohemian-

Colours of childhood.

With a feeling of belonging.

The thatched roof of the grandparents

Shaded happiness in a creamy bliss.

There were no airs

Airs of status, caste, and complexes

Life was just a breath of fresh air

No televisions, mobiles, cars, or electricity

To trap the body and soul in a static hole.

The cacophonous night was silenced

In the flickering of the lamps

When grandmother's shadow played

Hide and seek on the walls

As she churned out story after stories

Bringing Rama, Sita, and the rakshasas alive.

The benevolent sky and the verdant meadows

Sheltered rustic treasures.

The brooks quenched the thirst

The wild berries satiated the soul

A tiny nest of myna stirred curiosity

A hooting owl left us in awe.

So many memories in the quaint hamlet,

Dusted with miners' blood,

Nestled in the red-veined nature's lap.

A ragi bhakri with jaggery

Rice gruel and raw mango pieces,

A simple potato bhajji,

And a thin rice polle or chapati

Served with a toothy smile

Made those summers

The best season of the year.

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2025

Shehnai

Day-28

NaPoWriMo-2025

                                                              Image Credit: Internet

The soft, lilting notes

of shehnai-

swirls in the air

illuminating the

evening with its sheer presence.

The season of love

resonates in the evening skies.

The pulsating heartbeats

The fragrance of jasmine

The incense sticks and the sacred

Mantras harvest a feeling of

A new beginning.

Time to make promises.

time to feel, 

to be together

hand in hand

around the sacred fire.

A lifetime of vows

encircle the rising flames.

Together, they walk

towards their destiny

for better or worse.

                                                                   The Shehnai Maestro

Prompt: Music features heavily in human rituals and celebrations. We play music at parties; we play it in parades, and at weddings. In her poem, OBIT [Music], Victoria Chang describes the role that music played in her mother’s funeral. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event of some kind.

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2025

Celcius (Haiku)

Day-27

NaPoWriMo-2025

                                                                      PC: Sunita

forty degrees heat

the soul is on a burner

juiciness on tongue

    Participating in : NaPoWriMo-2025

Leap of Faith

Day-26

NaPoWriMo-2025

                                                                          PC: Sneha

Faking, the plethora of emotions,

Lots of water has flown under the bridge,

The dirge of thoughts chases the hidden motions,

The phantoms of the past advance and merge.

A venomous labyrinthine serpent,
Arousing the darkness and nothing seen;
Guilt, sadness, desire, and fate echo the chant,
Weeps in aching silence, the shriveled spleen.

The smell of soil beckons, the rusted flesh,
A fathomless, unquenchable life feel,
Whispering winds, the wheels of fate unleash,
On a deadening stench of burning peel.

The brewing storms uncover the charade-
No time to introspect, the ongoing parade.

Prompt: Try your hand at a sonnet – or at least something “sonnet-shaped.” Think about the concept of the sonnet as a song, and let the format of a song inform your attempt. Be as strict or not strict as you want.

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2025

Faith (Haiku)

Day-25

NaPoWriMo-2025

       

                                                                                 PC: Sunita 

pain sharpens the faith

the crisscrossing short lifelines

rejuvenated 

Participating in : NaPoWriMo-2025

Music Bonds

Day- 24

NaPoWriMo-2025

Image Credit: Google

                                           

There is a silent

Beauty in growing old;

Far away from an untamed youth

A soft silence resonates

Whenever listening to the musical notes.

A few  old friends

Bonded with decades of-

Friendship, shared secrets

Memories, and passion for music,

Always get together

Whenever the tides 

Shift the balance-

Humming all the old songs

Whenever the ancient radio

Is in full throttle.

"Dum maro dum"

" Woh shaam mastani"

"Jis galli mein tera ghar na ho balama"

Trying to remember

Some of the missing lyrics

Adding a few of their own

Not much bother... singing together matters.

Once in a while

The spouses join the chorus

The table top, spoons, glasses 

Turns into drums, bass and guitars

Aha! the amateur

Percussionists!

La la. lala la...lala la!

Forgetting most of the words

Improvising with "ha ha ha ho ho ho!

The laughter that follows

After the faux pas is contagious.

Mashing and mixing

Adding new words to the old songs

They make music with gusto

Laughing, dancing and cracking jokes

In between the singing sessions.

The youthful zest for life has waned

The memory plays hide and seek

The bones make lots of noise....

But- they are friends forever.

What keep them young at heart!

Touchwood! A shared passion!

Participating in : NaPoWriMo-2025

The Melodious Koel

 Day-23

NaPoWriMo-2025

                                                                     Video Credit: Sunita

What was that sound?

So sweet and melodious?

Letting my soul wander

For that momentary pleasure!

Aha!! It came from my backyard.

Concealed among the foliage

Serenading the morning chimes,

The queen of musical rhymes.

I peeked through my window

Craning my neck to view

What a contradictory sight!

Dark and melodiously divine

One of god's miracles!!

Cradled  atop the mango tree

Camouflaged between the branches

 Singing with its soothing voice

Nestled among the verdant canopy!

The sweetest voice

Of dark countenance

Made my heart and soul

 Blessed and blissful

Listening with tears in my eyes

At the magical wonder on a lusty April .

Ptompt: Humans might be the only species to compose music, but we’re quite famously not the only ones to make it. Birdsong is all around us – even in cities, there are sparrows chirping, starlings making a racket. And it’s hardly surprising that birdsong has inspired poets. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that focuses on birdsong. Need examples? Try A.E. Stallings’ “Blackbird Etude,” or for an old-school throwback, Shelley’s “To a Skylark.”

Participating in : NaPoWrIMo-2025

A Song of Life

 Day -22

NaPoWriMo-2025

                                                                       PC: Sunita

A scribbled diary,

Weeps about an

Ambitious journey,

Cut short by destiny.

Chasing dreams led to

Fragility of freedom.

With whispered defiance

Chilling brilliance 

Those fleeting moments

Lost opportunities,

Invades the mind

Once in a while.

What remains is

The habit of reading

The only legacy.

Rewiring the memories

Life is a survival manual

Less of a reality, more of a fiction.

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2025