46. Failure
Had I rubbed the gentle ants
In my opposable thumbs
That they do not have,
Had I held in disdain the bird
That twitters songs at my sight
Yet I find naught but lame,
Had I concealed all the light
By nuking the sun away
Leaving nothing to rage for—
Had I been amoral enough,
I would have won in this world.
47. Consumer Utopia
The useless mess
Of depreciated laptops
Of remotes without batteries
Papers read by dust-bunnies
Lay flooded like whites of a crest wave—
The tide of throwaway things
Having hit the family.
Dad drank his cup of coffee
Eating Donald Trump slander with it
Pretending to snort over the same jokes
Hoping for conversations to begin.
Mom curled in her book of years
As if its fables and hyperreal tears
Were any more real than the commodity
It tried hard not to be.
Young Dom’s head was warped in Twitter—Less said of him, the better—
And elder Joe had not yet returned
From his party in three nights
And the telly played in the distance
And in the broken wind, the silence.
P.S. I hid behind the moniker of TINTA since the account was opened on Instagram. Truth be told, this has always been my natural impulse. If I had my way, none of my works would be attributed to me. I write a lot of miserable stuff, which I don’t want attributed to my character. I am proud of my writing, but it is also comfortably the worst of me—where my most cynical, nihilist and antisocial tendencies come to fruit.
For a while, I hoped I could hide behind TINTA forever. Perhaps anonymity is cowardice, but it has always been my impulse. But people tell me there’s nothing sustainable about the moniker strategy—that I must put my name, centralize my content, ensure I take credit for everything in a brutal industry, blah blah blah.
So, briefly, let me introduce myself: I am Neil Nagwekar from Mumbai, India.
I don’t plan on abandoning the moniker TINTA though. Because there is a story behind TINTA, and I think it will take quite some time for it to be completed.
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