Timeless

 Day-6

NaPoWriMo-2026

Prompt: In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.

                                                                  Image: Sneha

A sudden shift

 Unannounced

The moods are on a swing

Enough!

Enough for today

A faded look in the eyes

She measures the lifelines

Loneliness cannot be measured

Still, those lifelines speak of

A new dawn on the horizon

As predicted, among 

All the debris and rubbles

It will happen sooner or later

A moment to settle things

Delve into all the ashes

And mountains of rubble

To find specks of peace

Whatever she needs for

Happiness...

A PERFECT SUNRISE!

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2026

Distaste

 Day-5

NaPoWriMo-2026

Prompt: Today, your challenge is to take a page from Catullus and Darwin, and write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.

                                                                     Image: Internet

How I hate that slimy thing

Sticky, yucky, and ugly!

The better half never forgets

To get that thing from the market.

But I stay away from it 

As much as I can muster

A courageous denial.

I know, it has medicinal benefits.

It can heal my creaking joints.

If that makes any sense

Considering the emotional

Drama it evokes

Everybody in my house loves it

The sticky, yucky, slimy thing.

Gosh! The smell, the look

Causes my tongue to burn

And my stomach to churn

Why should they name it

After ladies' fingers?

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2026

Season of Flowers

 Day-4

NaPoWriMo-2026

Prompt: Today, we’d like to challenge you to craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length.

                                                                  Painting by Sunita

The south-western breeze swirls,

Coolly and joyfully

Touching the window curtains

Spring touches the heart softly.

The senses are awake

As many voices and scents resonate

The koel on the tamrind tree

Singing melodiously,

Warms the cockles of my heart

The thick Jasmine vine

Blooms in my little space

Flowers of many shades, so divine

Livens my happy place.

The tall mango tree sways

Like a sentry in the garden

Laden with blooming fruits

Tempting with the taste of the season.

Celebrating the season, I pick up my watercolors

Filling the blank pages with colors.

Participating in: Napowrimo

The Teacher

Day-3

Napowrimo-2026

Prompt: Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it is typically considered to be. Perhaps your poem will feature a very relaxed brain surgeon or a farmer who hates vegetables. Or maybe you have a poetical alter-ego of your own, who flies a non-wan, treasure-hunting flag with pride.

                                                                      Image: Sneha

Such blank faces!

Hundreds of them

Innocent and raw

Just out of schools

Walked through the corridors 

Searching for old faces.

They felt lost and confused

Among the strangers.

Then she walked in

Scouting every face

Blank looks stared at her

She smiled, understanding 

Their plight in the citadel of

Learning. It is not easy

To face so many challenges 

In a strange premises.

She geared up to mould the 

Minds, set in an archaic fold

It takes patience and deep 

Sense of belonging

To be in their shoes.

It took her three years. 

Like a potter, polishing

Their beliefs and rustic views 

When the time came

For those young minds to fly

With their heads held high

To face  the world with 

A confident smile,

She watched them from a distance.

She always hid 

In the background 

With so many success stories, 

She herself  lacked the confidence

To face the world. 

Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2026

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