Marauding Minotaur 

(on Picasso’s painting “Guernica”)

War is a ketchup for Bellona’s bridegroom 

to garnish a breakfast on the table of tyranny.

For some, it is a spectacle to watch on screens and 

for the rest, it is real killing of their kith and kin.

A lustful union between pelf and power always

gives birth to a war-mongering mongrel

that gnaws its teeth at the teeming

millions who are at the mercy of it.

O Fascist, come out of your sheath of megalomania;

The task of the stallions is not only to carry 

the combatants into battlefields, but to

transmit the tidings of peace to a far-off land.

The teeth of the tyrant are nothing but knives

that keep shining at the sight of flesh.

The architect of unrest might anytime be thrown

into the labyrinth he himself commissioned to make.

Premonition

(on Holman Hunt’s “The Shadow of Death”)

Sometimes, we have to undergo the undesirable

as per God’s plan. If God himself is unaware

about his own future, it’s a different thing.

Little does he know that his life of carpentry

would lead him to a wooden cross on which 

nails and hammer will seal his destiny forever. 

He administers potions of piety and passion

on the lesions of a legion who eagerly wait for

the much-desired deliverance from pus of sins.

He does not dread the portents that are hovering

on the firmament of fate. He knows: eons later, his 

lessons would move a multitude on the track of trust.

Pradip Mondal is an academic based in Nainital (India). His poems and book/film reviews have been published in Suburban Witchcraft (Serbia), Muse India (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore), Indi@logs (Spain), Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), and Setu (USA).