26. Candlelight Dinner
Flames fought to stay alive
Dying on discounted wax
In glass lamps with cracks
While tubes and bulbs above
Lay in stubborn slumber
During candle light night.
Beady eyes and wide smile
From his sweetheart—
The love of his life—
Enticed bile than butterflies,
Radiance of a goddess
Wasted on a nihilist.
Was this anxiety attack
Under which his
Entire life was lived
Allergic also to bliss?
“I love you,” she mouthed
Hinting at a kiss.
He leaned in
The air was more smoke than mist.
27. The Words of Music
Why is poetry such a pain?
Is it not music in the end?
Place words in a pretty stance
Let them play in the reader’s eyes
Like a merry song and dance?
Your soul needs its romance
Its partner in crime, from time to time
To soar in the velvety sky
On an arc, a journey, then a voyage
Then maybe by spaceships and planes
To lands of thought that look like Oz,
Inside Out or Ozymandias’ visage.
28. Fickle Wind
Wind quickens its claws and teeth
Rising from bowels of trees and leaves
Clustered at ends of the earth,
Havens disowned for plastics and concrete.
In caves and vales it circulates
From jocular jogs
To massacre of a billion bullets
Rousing its regiment
Whirling with unripe fruits
And ripening dreams.
At last in pelting rain
It unleashes to full effect
Its disdain on cemented lands
Like fungus on conquered stone
Or human hands gripped in
Famished carnivorous teeth.
But when shuttered windows
Shut it up with ease—
Weather forecasts trivialized
Its rage, and bored eyes
Of the metropolitan man
Demanded with skeptic brow
If its catastrophe was anything more
Than wetted gadgets and delayed trains
It curled once about the street
And fell, embarrassed, asleep.
29. Fear and Fright
In the castaway light
It slumped in feeble slumber
Like flesh without form
Crescent without night.
Puny little pawn with sticklike fingers
Foetal pose, perpetual morose
Head balder than an egg
Withering aside, ugly black thing
Locked in a black box inside.
But cometh the hour, cometh the time—
Caught unawares by monotony
Ambition and a repressed mind
That bald little thing took clay and lime
Rose churches, forts and graves
Mazes filled with loops
Dug its heels into membranes
And became no more a beast mocked
But a despot to be fought.
30. The Will to Cower
When wine turns to water
Tongues become ash
Vultures smack beaks
Before a man is a corpse
And the black sky shoots stars to kill
Will is first to sway in the wind.
When velleities that run in blood
Reach the sedated skull,
Dull charges of defeat
Reignite their red lights
And failure becomes a feeling
Long before an actual result
Will is first to sway in the wind.
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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