All comes down to the galactic
whorls of a fingertip

As if smoothing out
a creased life-line

I stroked her palm
all night

Not a wink

Her eyes pinned
to the blood-bottle

Bead by bead
rolled like a rosary

My mother and I
Silent

Her tongue had lost its taste
Mine, its poison

--First published in Indian Literature, Sep-Oct 2023.

Every evening the trees inhale birds

Swirling back home like a warm shawl

But I still wait for my perch in your arms

I would peg so lightly the sheets of your night flights

We would travel  in one mind  your old lands,  my new skies

And every morning you would breathe me fly 

--First published in Ghostmasters. Hong Kong : Chameleon Press, 2010.

Unless by heart is meant the anatomical,
believers do not use the word
in poems. Believers of 

Precision, we
who measure words, distances
between words and things
they try to touch.

Calibrating thus I walked to the river-bank
where countless hearts of stone
protested the analogy. 

I picked up one and a cold wave
tore along my arm to crash, not left
of centre, but in the exact center
of my chest. Then froze into a knot.

Hearts sink because blood is thicker than water.
Don’t I keep on searching for that heart of gold.
The day I stepped upon a broken heart barefoot.

Upon a rock, a heron, and another heron,
upside down, immersed in the water
without touching.

Then without warning soared
my winged heart.

-- First published in Verseville, 2024.