if I ever were a banyan
I would have soared high
enough into the blue sky
higher than any proud eucalyptus
grounded stronger than any other root
heavier than one hundred elephants
I would have grown upward
not in meters, but a couple of miles
too outreaching and lofty for men
for that might have been one reason
for nobody to chop my trunk
for no bird to ever become homeless
for then, men would've sensed and feared
the grand weight of my life

remind me again how wilting pain can prove to be
tell me things that my body had forgotten awhile
my simper has gone and so have my quips
there's just pain, a sea full of it, deep down
my armor a wreck and my senses diminished
i know the nobility is nothing more than wisp
i can look into the mirror and find surprise
the sincerest effort of a man is to just survive

(for Mae, our dear fellow poet. get well soon.)

i am an ocean
you don't know all
you can break the brine
you can see underworld piscine
you can reach to the corals
and collect few shells, pearls
you can pump out petrol
but you don't know all
i am an ocean
you know what you see
but that's not all of me
i am more than tide
i am more than water
i am deepest secret
i am fullest crater
i spin clouds far away
i talk to the sun night and day
i tell rivers to move on
i am every mountain's dungeons
i am the currents of wind in summer
and the cold waves by the autumn fall
i am an ocean
you don't know all

Bliss
lives
at
one
furlong
from
me.
My
neighbors
are
anemones,
am­aryllises,
roses,
lilies.

dad never scolded the butterfly
which wandered all around all time
he never complained to the birds
why they chirped about, strolled high
he never flanked these guys as he did to me,

i wish, instead of books to study,
i had those wings to flee!

O collector,
what adorns you
as jewels garnered
upon tender pickings
of beaded words
and knitted faith,

was once the pulse of my heart!

Each day
There is a sea of faces
Strangers walk along
And then away

Last day
Someone stole
The green of the leaf
Now it looks all pale

And Today
I no longer know
Whom to believe
All seems a dream