Only three letters and eighteen years lie
between innocent cries and ignorant whys.
Toast to the young man with a red-stained tie
just as clear water had turned into wine.

1
Navigating through liquid crowds
in this city map of rooting veins.
With only a single eye, left, open,
capture every drop as it remains
seeping into pedestrian subways.
Neon flyers flutter for today.

There is a hint of salt in the air.

Faceless individuals, they never ask
but somehow they always know.

2
Silent assemblies
at school when we refused to sing;
on the streets we learn
to breathe through toxic chemical overkill
and politics and chemistry
and physics and geography.
And humanities.

We held green tickets for the first time,
not for conventional reasons,

but as an unspoken goodbye.

3
Find comfort in being overshadowed
by trees, by skyscrapers, by people,
yet we speak when need be
to whom
must listen
when we discard our reserved nature
within or against the same brick walls
at home or across the oceans.

They ask you about your hometown
They ask you what this poem is about
Say “it’s complicated”,

* * * * *   * * *   * * * * * * *   * * * * *   * * * *   * * * *   * * *

At the heights of a Surrey valley
is where I stand alone.
The clouds roll in with attempted suppression,
wuthering, as one may say.
Yet they succeed and I do not.

All this vacantness on the moors,
in turn: suffocation.
All this gale of violence and madness,
not a single shiver,
but a private, intense burning sensation.

Would it set fire to the moors, the libraries,
and the red curtain theatre?
Or would it melt the defendant themselves?
I wish for the former,
yet I am already melting.

I put my hand on the gnomon-less sundial,
and still I stand alone
drunk on the all-consuming emotions
inflicted by these brick walls
or rather the crowds of unpredictability within them.

Take me with you to your Atlantis
Where hues of blue glisten in noons
For eternity we embrace in its promise

Are days of sober in crystallic bliss
Are nights of glacial comfort under mystic lunes
Take me with you to your Atlantis

Wash me into a tender kiss
Too soft to be witnessed but the full moons
For eternity we embrace in its promise

Beyond boundaries of mortality at this
ocean, through the skies and dunes
Take me with you to your Atlantis

Volumes and arks fill up the abyss
with painted tales of Atlantic ruins
For eternity we embrace in its promise

When love dreamily left only to reminisce
as the ink of Plato seeped in tunes
Take me with you to your Atlantis
For eternity we embrace in its promise

It's their way of living
that you have no right to judge
"It's spring and summertime.
Blossoming flowers along my jogging route.
Cherry blossom trees too."

"That's nice. We have a cherry blossom tree
at school as well."

"The flowers weren't blossoming last time I went jogging.
The cherry blossoms are only pretty for a couple of days.
The trees down there look so dead all the time.
They weren't dead last year when we moved here."
I wondered if I ought to take off my earpiece.

"Yes. I agree."

"Your father ought to stop buying junk."
"Yes, he ought to."
"Has your mother always been skinny?"
I nod and stir the same old *** of instant noodles.
I like my parents just the way they are.

Curiouser and curiouser.

"It's their way of living
that you have no right to judge."

We were meant to be.
Our paths crossed for a reason.
We were meant to be.
We met at the end of the season.
Our futures intertwined like the vines
crawling up the branches of pine trees and,
eternal touch and care,
one may crave, but what if it wasn't meant to be?
Farewells, not any one can bare
with ease for his is what we cannot see -
We are blind to passerbys.
Just say goodbye.
That's all.

Island to island and back
The latter I pray for yet lack
Is the question "when" or "if"?
For once, I see everything in a different light
The key to Heaven's gate is death, unless?
There is no unless... for now
For now, I am stranded
I miss h...