Benumbed Poems | Examples

Long Drive from Yesterday

The hours have been driving me,
miles upon miles have sunk the sky,
Florida now hangs from distant cypress trees.

I almost miss the exit ramp,
This kind of waking and sleeping
is controlled by a ghost in my head.

Now I am eyes on the corners
where a flickering sunset
swings between interlaced trees.
Feet juggle over a low flying road,
while tense hands wind and unwind
on a sullen wheel.

This country road I know well, but the
fading day wants to paint me out
of my own map,
the familiar takes upon it
many alien shades.

Hours are melting back
to sleep with the Manatee,
I grind through the gears
swing on a hammock of
slow and fast moments.

The driveway dives out
of a side-show hedgerow.

Car-parts rattle into silence.

Benumbed bones lag behind
as the engine ticks on in a
somnambulant daze.

House windows watch curiously

as a stranger to Ohio
enters a place it calls home.

Winter Withers

Winter Withers

…… its way into the woods
and waits….and wonders….and watches
until…. No-one is looking.
Boorishly, an ally introduces itself,
an iced-sliced wind to quiver-shiver
the woods’ most tender saplings;
to shudder the aged evergreens
with sharpened, encrusted crystals 
sandpapering the toughest, roughest bark.

Weather warning complete, 
Winter then crunches forward,
cold shouldering its way through the night
to finally rest against a solitary cabin.
Inside that logged shelter, Man awakens
allowing his thoughts freedom
from the waiting room of his mind.
Man has learned how to listen,
but much more importantly,
this man has listened how to learn!
What he now sharply tells himself is…
Winter has arrived; survival demands action.

Man has lived for a year with Mother Nature 
after his severance with city life;
he now feels a yearning for the three R’s:
reconnecting, refiguring and relocating.
Man can’t allow Winter’s weathered wings 
to embrace him with glacial isolation
nor allow its benumbed playmate… Loneliness
to knock, again, on that fragile, front door.


Ian Souter

Your Incarnation

A stirring storm of lightning like lava caused commotion. 
Among seraphims and cherubims… clouded confusion.
The father asked, when all prophets failed, 'who, now, would I send?'
Celestials, like souls of ghosts, stood benumbed at your consent.

Didn't the chorus of 'Holy' give you endless pleasure?
Did the heavens strain you so that you sought earthly leisure?
The galaxies and constellations stood in sombre surprise.
Who could stop you when visions of salvation filled your eyes?

Didn't you know a cross-shaped piece of wood would be your bed?
Your flesh would be torn. Bones would be broken. Blood would be shed.
Stretching your nailed hands and your damaged legs, you would stand dead.
Wasn't it with no knowledge of grief that you went ahead?

The heavens descended on the earth at your incarnation.
Times, O Christ, ticked your timelessly timed perpetuation.

Exulted

Exulted! That I could inhale
After the breath had ceased –
The timely, saving, gasp(!)
My desperate lungs did seize
Ballooned my aching spirit
As wings that further flight
Will shower land-low eyes
With vistas wide with sight –

Delivered from the crippling chains
That held me struggling, still
My mind – benumbed – was re-engaged
And then, empowered by a vital will
Soundless as the word unspoken
I sudden started to,
As if a link had severed,
And life
Began anew!

I And Me

Fighting against external enemies is natural.
Isn't my fight against myself a Herculean task?
Desires and drives that decrease me into an animal
In my predicament, my consciousness is in a mask.

Values and valuations, like heroes and villains, fight
Benumbed by existential angst, I resign to the fate
My conflicts between power, peace, and patience reach their height.
The poles of physique and psyche pull off in a hate state.

Discord between desires and deceit, like lane dividers
Divert my inner equilibrium from its axis
Even thick kith and kin seem out of the blue outsiders.
There's no logic between my philosophies and praxis.

As though unbridled, my horse of existence runs trackless.
I run fight battles within and lose hapless and helpless.

Along Windy Way

Written: November 28, 2023
             ______________________________________

Beneath the sweltering luminescent sky.
A thunderbolt flared over the silent firefly.
Oak-smoke tones and vanilla bean paste.
Swung idly, draped as moss from a baste.

Tintinnabulation caused by wind-borne sighs.
The gentle quiet of flora roughness is dry.
Evenfall cobalt-wrapped nascent starlight.
A crescent-shaped moon is gloaming in flight.

An avalanche of a billion Katydid wing beats
Cricket voices in a range of alto to bass feats
My gem-encrusted flame bursts and spits.
Beneath a benumbed bowl, boiling hiss.

My soul finds solace in the lichened death fall.
I was thrilled by the fire and the creepy owl call.
A soft mist falls across drooping eyelids.
amid the dancing stars and firefly skids.

Shambles

“Let me rant and let me ramble, you’re looking at a lunatic in shambles.”
                                    ~' Let me be' by The Mighty Mighty BossTones

Do you ever feel hot, palms sweating? 
your hands and feet burning
your heart benumbed
and yet, you feel a chill 
running through your body.
When you look back and
see mostly an uneventful life
and see only a foreboding haze ahead?

When all the religions and the scriptures
all the philosophical treaties 
and all the political maneuvering,
The social and moral proprieties 
that you adhered to all your life
now seems to appear nothing but a farce.

All the passions and the obsessions
the ideals and the ambitions of your life
they all come roaring back 
like the waves of the sea at high tide
and then quietly recede
leaving behind  
a troubled and cynical soul in shambles.


~04/09/23
~Contest: Writing Challenge 'S' words
~Sponsor: Constance La France

On the Sajek Valley

On the spike peak of the dark hill
there is no wall but the dim clouds
scream with the thunders; there is
no tears but the pale sky weeps 
with the ruby dusk whispering I'm

Stranded cottage on the Sajek valley
coconut water in the wine bottle on
the tattered table confined with the 
spider net and the kerosene lamp on
the falling way of dousing with my sigh

Crickets are busy with jazz sounds in 
the deep solitary bush; no hiss, hiss
but the snake wandering beside the 
window sill on the moonless ethereal
night where the benumbed veins reign

Lost I'm myself in the abyss lane of the
blind sky eyes where the lizard eyes are
the death angel and the dumb is burst
sounds of at hand death of brave sense,
where the thirst is quenched elixir of breath

No verse of beliefs, no holy verse came to
rescue the heartbeats, the gigantic teeth 
of the silhouette stung the nerves of the 
living dream and I'm carried by the sunny
bier where my awakens fired the nightmare


March 23, 2023
© Mahtab Bangalee

Gait

My gait spasmodic
I staggered drunkenly
My inner voice a thousand tongues
Of crazed cacophony

In mumbling incoherence
My muddled mind benumbed
I sought the words I fumbled for
As if I were struck dumb

But sentence was unstructured
And thought was compromised
Were I to even form a word
Complexity – be mine

The Thought took hold – though – 
In shape – and form – and slowly
I expressed in words
What only wise men know –

Tolerant Unfeeling

In endless dark tunnel, 
winding incisive anguish
delves deep tireless through 
insensate sensual strata. 

Visual surface of being sheared 
to shards by excruciating trauma, 
sinks to benumbed depth 
of tolerant unfeeling... 
        
seamless stillness.

__________

January 16, 2023
For Brian Strand Contest No 1170

Spirited Gestures

*Image of Morning Rise by Giphy.

Spirited Gestures

Cast restlessness about the wind,
That toss and empty leaves from trees,
The autumn season sees them thinned,
A tingling sense of breathing squeeze,
Be auburn reds hint golden scene,
Like royal robes and crowning queen.

Genteel polish a crystal shine,
Oblige passage involving wake,
Luster beckons whispering shrine,
A pristine call edges a lake,
Mindful ears recognize courses,
Coming wafts like thirsty horses.

Slight Boreas push chills a bit,
Zephyrus cut short, warms again,
A tit for tat that never quit,
The disturbed rest till strength regain,
Nature takes heed and nothing more,
Benumbed deep down within its core.

Relaxed lay calm felt now surrounds,
Idling base fresh breezes fill,
Perianths rise and fall on grounds,
Prompts unfailing the currents spill,
Unseen traces the length of thee,
Forces abound heaven's decree.

2022 September 28
*8th Place*
A BRIAN STRAND PREMIERE CHOICE
~~Brian Strand: Judged 2022 September 28

*RZ; ababcc, dedeff, ghghii, jkjkll. HMS; 8 syllables per 24 lines.

A Omne and Scrappy Find

Perusing some recently mindless & unlabeled
shelfed works (my recently ancient poems),
benumbed fingers pluck jumbled words;
musings that had much meaning once
but now seem more like
the random scattering of monkey turds.

A thousand keyboards are buried in my brains landfill,
and here come the plucky and ribald seagulls
to peck at the words still wriggling through
unplugged motherboards.

Still and all, there may be a line or two
that have escaped the ravishes
of times disinterest and ennui,

there may be a poem here - somewhere,
its small, quivering spirit still hopefully squeaking:
"pick me, pick me!"

There I Lie

Here I lie, enshrouded
by the orangery aura cast by
the fading rays of a setting sun
I have long waited for sunrise
I sit at the brink of yesterday
wrapped in the arms
of this lingering night, I await
it's ambience to descend
on me like warm sunrays

Here I wait, my heart
benumbed, my soul
in hibernation I await
rebirth, singing lullabies
to the moon, attempting
to lull it to sleep
for the sun to awaken
and pull its crown through
a crowd of lambent clouds.

Did She Smile

Floating in vacuum,
morphine intravenous supplied,
pain deadened,
she lies dormant, oblivious to all,
thoughts suppressed,
unfeeling and benumbed
in  the emergency cubicle.
 
Her husband holds her hand,
icy, like winter at its worst.
She moans, eyes flutter,
only to fall asleep again.
Anesthetized she finds rest.
Monitors bleep to rhythm,
steady as she goes just like
a sailing boat on rough seas.
 
She will survive.
Husband bewildered.
A human vegetable?
Oh no the expert says.
She will be fine.
The husband dials a number,
talks softly not to disturb.
There will be no divorce,
it's best that they give up
and do not meet again.
 
The woman on the bed groans.
Is that a smile on her lips?

Unfeeling

Desolate tunnel of wound devouring

Dug deep within the sensual strata

Soul sheared by excruciating shock

Sinks to benumbed depth of unfeeling...

Stillness.

_______________

February 5, 2022
Contest : Bite Size Poem # 35
Sponsored by : Line Gauthier

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