Reena Saxena

Donald Downer

/ rivrvlogr / 17 Comments

Donald Downer

What deeper descent than this lift?

Falling
Falling
Falling

Our attendant
Lips pursed
Beneath brim of red hat

Offers no excuses
Only promises
Of a living hell

The doors open to reveal
A hell no different than
The last four years trapped with him

A swift kick out the door
A simple X on a ballot
And we leave him behind

What sweeter ascent than this lift?

Reena’s Exploration Challenge #160 offers this scenario:

You go down in a lift that doesn’t stop for hours.
When it finally opens, what do you see?

patent, as in open

/ rivrvlogr / 61 Comments

patent, as in open

a hole in the wall
the shortest route
between two chambers

the heart of the matter

Reena’s Exploration Challenge #145 asks for a poem
that is as short and as cryptic as possible.

If the MRI I had on Tuesday shows no indication of past stroke,
my patent foramen ovale (PFO) will remain untreated.

Also linked to Open Link Night #270 at dVerse ~ Poets Pub.

Image
Detailed chambers of the heart & PFO illustration – © Mayo Clinic
(click image to see larger view in new tab)

As Above ~ ekphrastic poem

/ rivrvlogr / 33 Comments

As Above

so below, within the pulse that emerges
star fields forming just beyond

flames engulfing, just as quickly receding
depth in layers revealing what was always there

currents that conceal nothing and everything
eclipsing perception even as stars dance

their light washing away all you perceive
offering instead an amorphous birth

life in starlight

This ekphrastic poem is my response to the prompt for Reena’s Exploration Challenge #141 – Free Flow, which is to express a free flow of thoughts inspired by As Above, a video by artist Roman Hill showing the surface of a fluid chemical reaction accompanied by a pensive score.

Also shared with Open Link Night #269 at dVerse Poets Pub.

Image: screenshot from the video “As Above”

 

AS ABOVE from Roman Hill on Vimeo.

Perchance to Dream, Again

/ rivrvlogr / 28 Comments

Perchance to Dream, Again

From the buzz I felt, half-awake,
sipping water mid-night.

To my bones, my joints aching
to move as they did mid-dream.

Goosebumps telling me,
“It’s not over. Go back to sleep.”

Signs I heed, yet traces slip away
as I struggle to grasp them.

I piece together what’s left,
intent on returning to something

already gone, only to find a new tale
in this writer’s reality.

Reena’s Exploration Challenge #137 offers three phrases for inspiration:
     1. Writer’s Platform
     2. Writer’s Cave
     3. Writer’s Reality

Image source: Wikimedia Commons – Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh
(edited here)

Love’s Light

/ rivrvlogr / 26 Comments

Love’s Light

moonbeams dance ’round
your face, mingle with the light
of nebulae swirling within
your eyes to shine on this heart,
a reality this writer struggles
to put into words

Reena’s Exploration Challenge #137 offers three phrases for inspiration:
     1. Writer’s Platform
     2. Writer’s Cave
     3. Writer’s Reality

This also is linked to Open Link Night #267

Image source: © Francesco Batistella via Astronomy Picture of the Day

Warped

/ rivrvlogr / 25 Comments

Warped

I walk the walls,
my head around the corner
that lies beyond the door.
Precarious in this chair on the ceiling,
I cling to the fan that should not be
on the floor above me, spinning
me in starts and stops. In a world
of contradictions, I touch nothing
and everything at the same time.

Vertigo, my isolation.

This poem is my response to Reena’s Exploration Challenge #126,
where the theme is Isolation.