41. Sunlit Eroticisms
To sleep in desires, to wake with full bloom
Under cover of sheets; casual touch or two
With you by my side, the voyeur sun
Swirling haloes over your head,
Lying lathered in your radiant dew
Legs open, breasts askew.
You see me seeing you
My male gaze setting pinpricks on my skin
And a naughty, flattered laugh after
Relent without any plea or lament
Feasting on my moaning flesh
While bolting me in wetted folds.
We bounce together, together we breathe
Beady eyes boring inside of me,
But when – ah, when! – time, my friend
Arrives at the site I have long scouted
You leave when I come,
Withering in the loveless air
As if the dream were loose paper
Blowing in the wind
Leaving me alone with hot sun
And sticky trace. With sigh,
I find the half-empty box of tissues,
Disgrace on my face.
42. Music and Democracy
The piano plays by itself
Muttering overdone Mozart
While men in monocles and their wives
That still pretend to be feminist
Find newer pitches of oohs and aahs
For the seventeenth time.
The notes waft through the perfumes
Of the room, as alcoholic a release
As brandy in stainless glasses,
Merely rimmed red by thin lips
Loaded with lipstick.
They chortle when Mozart skips a beat
They despair over hunger and income inequality
They praise a poet no one has heard of
And knout children crying over the unnatural
Wavelengths of this room,
Calling them rakes and louts.
But the air after the monotone note dies
Is fraught with sickness and death—
With healthcare not cared on those that need it
With pleads of peasants met with evictions
With democracy eating minorities for breakfast
With the slow-steady tortoise conned by the hare.
But why must Mozart care?
After all, the piano plays by itself,
Of itself and for itself.
43. Our Prime Minister
The vomit coloured garland
Once handed to snotted hair
And eyes like dark commodes
That we call our Prime Minister
Grinned with bubbling white teeth,
His palms clasped in prayer
Much to the heavens’ despair
Concurring with shrieks of delight
From the rich, privileged
And jingoists alike
Piercing through the starchy sky
Like daggers in spines
Or knives through a pie.
44. Smiles and Giggles
The smiles and the giggles sounded alike
Alive with the mirth of country wives
Tittering over loser lunches
Over frappe machines, coffee and beans
So often one would think they humped it.
The smiles and the giggles sounded alike
That found joy in penny company
From men that woke wet thinking of her
While whiling aside the prime of their time
Sleeping and waking in uneasy dreams
Transformed from men to gigantic insects
Pests in their mind matching pests of flesh.
The smiles and the giggles sounded alike
And if she cared enough to expose her ears
To words from tongues so hollow
That they would burst into helium if pricked,
She would collapse with laughter—
Laughter at their blissless existence,
Laughter at their verminlike state,
Laughter at gym muscles and beer-breaks
That would leave them estranged from life
While she soared yonder the highest plane.
45. Temple of Lies
Was a time when the temple of lies –
When wiggled sages and devotees sans-eyes –
Were pebbles sunk like rubble in the sand
Like forgotten folds of an old man’s hand.
Lost and lovelorn, parasite without host
Till he (or she) who donned inhuman ghosts
For garbs took pains to pluck the fated grains
And built wonders of woe and disdain
That took its leprous walk around the park
Firms, cells, coffee shops without a name—
Until the park was Paradise no more
But a sea of boars chasing their own tails
Far the apple fell,
Like worms fleeing the lark.
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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