Theme: The Graduation
You made it. Thirty poems. Thirty days. Today isn’t about the “finish line”—it’s about the fact that you now have a momentum that may have been missing a month ago.
The Prompt
Write a poem about what comes after the 30 days.
The Exercise: The Open Door
Write about the new eyes you are wearing. How does the world look different after a month of looking for the kinetic in everything? End the poem with a question that you don’t answer.
Bonus Tip: The Final Tip
Keep the pen moving. You don’t have to write a poem tomorrow, but don’t let the “muscle” you’ve built go to waste. You are a poet because you write.
29. Exercise
It is an exercise,
Writing a poem.
A word growing
Like a plant.
An image or a theme
An emotion or an event
Suggested, let afloat,
Unaddressed,
Is then attuned,
Given air,
Mostly in solitude,
And in silence,
Till the clamour
Of words subsides,
Forms and reforms
Into proximities,
Recognisable,
Like a cousin
Who never visited.
The eye roves, so does the mind;
In both, there is an event
Of becoming like never before.
But mostly, one waits,
Like a passenger on a platform
For the sound of a train
Approaching from afar.
Is that his train?
Will there be a seat?
Where is it destined?
Does it matter at all?
----Ravichandra P Chittampalli
(30 April 2026)