11. Eden
Delicate sands stung into sorrowful eyes
Too dry to despair, too weary to weep.
Winds danced with an unbridled energy.
He rested, half-hid into sunken grains
With great toll gulping each rattling breath
While ants built hills in his ears, and vultures
Hissed with hasty harmony. He let last thoughts
Roam free. ’Twas time for the species to sleep.
Gone were days of mockery and taunting jive
Gone were nights of lies, deceits and adultery.
The virus had died; now Eden shall survive.
12. On the Present Business of the Poet
Examine with no shame the business of alleyways you shall never cross
Borrow morals from muttery mishappenings read in ponderous tomes with supreme pretence
Abuse amateur craft to twist prose that alliterate and rhyme
Pray for the cascade of confused praise that shower like soda water
And, given enough con, witness laureates of frauds and legends of laureates
For that is the present business of the poet.
13. No Exit
When danglers of fate poise the most vicious of hells—
Like proud puppeteers string sad necks on nooses
By marriage of tea-brained Grandpas, paranoid parents
And brats with millennial mania under one roof—
Then there is not aught to be done to liven the party
Spare applaud the audacity of this purgatory
Snicker at the slow severance of valueless families
Hitherto cobbled carelessly with wire and masking tape
Battered and tearing as time made backbiting monkeys of men.
Reality has danced on the graves of our fibs so fancy
So let’s gleam the terrible truth and together dance with it—
We are puppets of fate; don’t be Pinocchios about it
Family is dead, family remains dead, we have killed them
So! Men and women,
In disguise of safety, say no to community.
14. Ten Years Ago
Ten years ago, I remember living.
Inside the shattered shine of stainless steel
Which caught little light from one densing night
Lay enshrined my spineless face.
Those angry tears for eyes embraced the blade
Clenched by stuttering sweaty palms
Allowing itself to wonder whether
The messy matter of a late-night suicide
Was just reward for little life.
Those friends that thought me effeminate—
My drunken dread for a dad
That artificial woman and my older brother to whom
She was much more a mother
Would finally fret, worry and sob over my broken body.
Won’t they be sorry?
Thoughts that entice a new lease of life
Open avenues of possibility.
Who says taking my own life is weak
Or that surrender cannot be sweet?
What if afterlife turns out a treat?
But in this selfish society where I am put to trial;
Grief and denial are mere parables.
My so-called friends and family
Would readily commit treachery to my memory
By believing I should have bottled my melodrama.
They would blame my grave for their misery
And concoct denials to conceal their regret;
They would wail a while, then forget.
When it dawned that they were too
Cold-hearted to feel scars deep,
I denied myself the glorious funeral I would never visit.
I bit my lip bloody and went back to sleep.
Ten years after, I do not remember living.
15. To Athens
Was it ever real?
When sieves of centuries rose towers of technologies
And free reign of industries
Were we wide-eyed philistines to surmise
That shinier dawns would not mean darker nights?
When kings turned Presidents
Subjects turned citizens and
Pastors and yeomen were euthanized
Like mental parasites
Did we erase an essential delight
In our hasty hotchpotch of
Modern democracy?
Did we commit grave folly
By formation of ten-thousand-worded rulebooks
For two-hundred countries each
Or prescribing millions of philosophies
For political maladies?
How did you stem the sea of demagoguery?
How did you civilize hordes of barbaric tribes
That prey on pride and mockery
In times when the wheel and fire were yet novel
And water choked with lead?
How did you build a pristine paradise for man, woman and child,
For body, soul and mind?
Was it ever real,
Or were the tomes of history too kind?
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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