Mother, look at Your men, lying half-dead in the ditch
of alchohol while their helpless children wait
till late night for their return.
Look at Your wasted youth,
their souls infested with ants of pleasure,
their bones & flesh corroded with drug,
their arms full go syringe-marks,
their veins choked with SP tablets,
their brains cut off from the past, present & future,
their hearts severed from family, friends & themselves.
I look at their eyes, there is nothing there, except emptiness.
Look at them gathering in road & bazaar corners,
half-ruined lives which even shame can't fuel
the need for self-respect. Nothing to do & nowhere to go,
they say they have dreams but no road to let them walk on.

Look at Your good son, driven to deadends,
red flags in one hand & guns in the other,
they sing suicide-songs, freedom-songs, death-songs.
Are they only short sparks in the vast darkness
which will soon run its course & end up
burning their young fingers & others' homes?
And night enters the famished lanes humming
like the engine of heavy Army trucks.
Every time the convoys stop, their little worlds are ambushed by terror.
Trying to find a way out between blood & money,
between hope & uncertainty, their own bullets find their fates
in their own heads, (if lucky) in the opponents'.
Who is this masked men in black gown, staring straight & long into
Your face, Your heart, as if you are a foreigner in Your own home,
as if you are wrong for fighting for your own self.

Inside the city of blood & violence, of poverty & unexpressed anger,
Your heart flaps its weak wings, looking for love in
hungry time, looking for dreams not yet born.
In a corner of the troubled road, Your future stands like a broken loner.
The gun of Your present is empty, Your pockets are without any cartridges.
Exile in Your own home, where will you go?
The gallery of history welcomes me with a momento of shame,
a signature of cheat, a souvenir of unfulfilled hope, death of innocence.

Wait! Who are these angry old women protesting naked in broad daylight?
Our own dear mothers, challenging death & persecution, bullets & butts.
Wait! Who is this frail lady lying in a dingy hospital bed,
eye full of love, fasting for years? Our own sister.
Wait! Who are those torch-bearing women staying awake at night
when bamboo trees moan endlessly of missing sons & daughters,
of losing life and dignity? Our own mothers.

Words aren't important-What I care for is Your heart.
Yet so helpless I go on using words.
But I know, like me, You won't give up.
Like me You won't cry.
Like me, You won't kneel in defeat.
Like me You won't sell yourself.
My pain is my home. I live in it, with it, wherever I go.
But Your pain is your passageway to self-discovery,
Your pain your pilgrimage.
Can you stop the kite from drifting in the direction the hot wind is blowing?
Thus, I walk on in the footpath of quite foreign avenue alone.