Songs of the Dead

Abandoned, forgotten passwords, we will be buried and burnt.
Or replaced. Our laughter stripped of its sound bytes
will freeze in frames. Our conversations will loiter
in the marketplaces of lost cities

Their wise songs have gone, dashed against cliffs.
Wiping off dewdrops from grass lips, the day stretches.
Its grayness splits. A bird sings from a branch. Both are plastic.

In the land of the natives, they drink rain at noon.Their singing,
a belch of hunger twangs. Their songs sleep in termite mounds
that were once a book. A river serenades a school.

No one remembers how to swim. Under a real tree a real boy
plays with a bird wing and not knowing how to be unreal
he is thrashed to death, still singing his mad songs.

Feathers burst from clouds. More rain for dinner.
The bird sings its plastic song. Two trees die burning his body.

Some nights remain in little eyes. Small bodies walk in sleep,
brushing teeth. The water never touches their dreams.

Buried, hungry babies never come home. Sadness floats down
on a yanked-off transparent, dragonfly wing.

Reena Prasad is a poet/writer from India, currently living in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). Her poems have been published in several anthologies and journals e.g. The Copperfield Review, First Literary Review-East, Angle Journal, Poetry Quarterly, York Literary Review, Lakeview International Journal, Duane’s PoeTree, Mad Swirl etc. She is also the Destiny Poets UK’s, Poet of the year for 2014 and one of the editors of The Significant Anthology released in July 2015. She was adjudged second in the World Union Of Poet’s poetry competition, 2016 and won an award for poetry in the 2016 “As You Like It International Poetry Contest” commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare. She won the Reuel International Prize for poetry, 2018.