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Writer's pictureNeil Nagwekar

TINTA Poems #15


61. The Hounds of War


When slimy cockroaches invade your premise

And make hell of your homespace;

When smirking maggots munch at your flesh

Chomp at you like scavengers on leaves

And pay no heed to your screams or pleas;

When the suit-men of ivory towers

Paint flowers on gravels and call them gardens

Or claim a genocide the Second Coming;

When the lowest of the low arrogate themselves

As the salt of the earth, the true cheese of life

Holier than Hawking, classier than whisky and wine,

And disguise themselves as truth or theory, while being

Menace to all things merry; Must one then knout the hounds of war

Before freeing the chains and setting the animals

Upon them all—

The sadists, the suit-men, their children

And of them what remains.


For bad things to end one must breed worse

And the sons of Satan be exiled with such great force

That worms and peasants must quiver at each breath

Their love of life tenfolded by fear of death.

The hard-men must triumph over the suits

And enforce covenants by force or fraud

Crushing opposition narrow and broad

Until no sign or semblance in the land remains

Of their oppression that once took place.

When seeds of revolt burst into song

It matters not who is right and whom wrong

What matters is the bourgeoisie strung from the nape;

Their pets and parents murdered or raped,

The sweet swishing of the guillotine on foes and mates

Or anyone who dared oppose the law of the new state

Until the hammering of society into good shape;

For when the smell of revolution is in the air,

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.


62. The Human Commodity


Wry, wry, Feet on the carpet Face flushed to the sky Permanently scarred With the painted smile-


Arms that pulverize Shrugged subtly aside As they humbly decline to Thrash the life out of The social frenemy, due to Goodness of heart.


But above all - a cadence to please To lie in melodies To simper up the ladder And condescend to lesser-thans With their useless anxieties.


63. Wordsworthian Child


Mouth agape, eyes of rotten grapes

Skin fiendish pink

No paedophile’s kink


Stomp-a-trot, stomp-a-trot

Squeak-squeak wail the boots

Perpetual the chatter of milk tooth

“Daddy dance with me dance with me”


Sighing, I agree

To the prisons of parenting.


64. Castrated Mind


The castrated mind is a curious thing:

It blanks and bottles and people-pleases

Weasels into the words of zealots

Sheep-simpers to the racist shepherd

And belies in docile allegiance

Even to the emotionally aware

The secular, the kindly, the fair—

Those poor women and non-Byronic men

Who dared repair the castrated mind

With dreaded love and care.


This is, alas, an impossible task.

For the castrated mind stands for naught—

It cannot know nice from not-nice

When it glorifies flora, fauna and trauma alike:

Thinks like a whirlwind, speaks like a tree

And bends over backwards to please

Since to refuse itself to anyone

Is not considered right.


And beware the day it stands for itself!

The day it sees its emasculation—

For the unbridled rage, the pissy-parade

The bottle exploding with angry champagne

Will necessarily have no meaning.


For when the castrated mind

Never knew what it stood for

Which hill will it pretend to die on,

And where shall it plant its red flag?


65. Lockdawns


Much to the delight of the rancid wind

Slipping out and through doors like unkind ghosts

She rose from the covers, weary and cold

And folded her pale sheet, tattered in holes.


Cleansed with paste and floss her young tongue bloody

Spitting in the basin her vows of youth

Painted foam on face momentarily,

Before by water and force tried to smooth.


When the velvety sun broke the black

And tired sounds reentered the room

Her sticks delivered her from rage

In the windowed flat that felt like a cage.


66. Deity and the Deep Sea


Between the angel that holds half my soul

With the delicacy of a Fabregé egg

As if worth more than five pence,

And the expanse of nectar water

An ebb tide that recedes

Tempting a dip before it ponders to leave

I stand, stranded on quicksand

Clutching a skull in hand like a prince

Drowning in problems of privilege

That everyone would baulk at or scorn,

Swaying in the wind like ripe corn.

 

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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