red on green

pleas to sustain and spare the pain

we’re bared to you for your gain

no cloak no quilt

only a mother’s guilt,

watching the glee with which

my green roots and shoots

trembled under your creaky boots;

grumbling old men with jittery teeth

that clatter and grind over beetle leaves

and worms in gums that chatter together

leaving big stains and a cancerous pane

of crimson and brown and blood and hound.

grumbling old men that don’t hesitate

to strike check mate-

and bring my fate,

axes and picks and saws- a dozen

only to kill all millions heathens.

grumbling old men that use the knife

to kill all of their wives

it’s similar to that don’t you see?

I served them too with brilliant tea.

so life is cut and life is eased

life is cut and life is eased

for deserted plains that resemble grey

desperation and dismay

-Tanmay

tsunami

I entered yesterday’s first class right at the moment I got up. It was a swift movement of the legs propelling me out of bed as a bunny would, and I jumped straight to my plywood table covered with an off white sunmica. I log in immediately for it is 2020, the year my generation is going through its first pandemic holed up in their homes, scared, bored, uncertain. Too much changed this year to make sense of. And the changes being so drastic their consequences are much more difficult to fathom. But I guess those with money are lucky. It’s not tough. Upholding the safety norms is enough. There’s enough time to indulge in myriad experiences, provided you’re in a city with low regulations. Experiences that’ll help cope with the tsunami of unknown consequences that’ll follow.

-Tanmay

bathroom bedlam and drugs

leaky faucets dripping incessantly

birthing a river; home to invisible creatures

I

on the pale commode

with my feet on the cheapest tiles we could afford ten tears ago

see transparent squids through silent eyes

tentacles warping in all directions

touching toes

touching souls

to transfer a message

between species, a message from the sea

of salt and petals and sharks and seagulls

the water calls

me

and I feel it on my head

the water

“Yes! I feel it!

A few drops! Like rain!”

but it’s only my slumber

that has me forgetting that

the electric geyser up there also leaks

-Tanmay

waste I

colossal waste

everywhere

dirty gritty wet waste

a bud from an expensive cigarette, a can of cheap beer, a rancid half eaten apple

oh such treasures

thrown away

into streets of ignorance with thwarting eyes

until a mountain erupts

showing off beautifully

the carcasses of a million yesterdays,

a million yesterdays of despair and

sadness shoved down to our gut

and then shed and then recycled and then shoved down again

debilitating

destructing…

(To be continued)

-Tanmay