The dumbfounded apiary
It has struck dumb the humming bee
The Queen is dead like still-born lamb
Mute mellifluous dithyramb
The hive is numb a hollow tomb
And honeycomb a waxy womb
The honey workers of the comb
Took crumbs of wax and left their home
In stillness like a catacomb
They make their way to distant coomb
Off on a prom climbing the air
With great aplomb yet unaware
On a limb far away from hive
On strange corymb they can't survive
Succumbing now to nature's debt
I doubt they'll see a new sunset
Benumbed sadness in my heart's plumb
For, I shall miss their subtle hum
I came seeking a child that was born a king.
I have strayed, beguiled from my undertaking.
It was a binary star that I chose to follow,
one path leading straight to Him,
but I sought the brighter glow
and became a wondering pilgrim.
My star led me here through circuitous routes,
through pleasurable meanderings
and gratuitous pursuits,
crossing mellowed valleys and honeyed springs.
I have smelled the flower of travellers-joy
and tasted the heady fruits of the vine.
I have eaten and drank till I felt cloy;
sought fun-loving company, avoiding the saturnine.
Questing warmth in the arms of more than one woman,
hypnotized by the charms of their fair sex;
tasting only their sweetness, like a persimmon,
sensing not the puckering in their vortex.
My eyes have feasted on many a sunrise,
and, again, they drank in the satiny sunset.
I have allowed my mind to fantasize,
benumbed by the beauty of that distant vignette.
Life has been a sweet potion to swallow,
but time is running out, I must reach my goal,
pursue the star fast losing its halo
and find the King, I must save my soul.
I’m here now, where is this child?
all I found was a Man Crucified.
A line of trees
Cold blown; benumbed.
What glows for Day's eye thereneath
Sinister is.
Late Autumn eve.
Fogs of cursed tales
Now fall. Funeral bell toadstools
Pixies atop.
Drifter, into a bog's slop
Enticed, amiss....
They lie in wait, a lie of state
A statement therein lies
The journey long that bears the song
Aloft to culmination
The strike is swift, the rest, the lift
Arresting once safe passage
And so is made, this tempting trade
For food of thought is fleeting
She rests attesting to this moment
No siren song but lilting
And in an instant instantly
A melody is risen
The aire is born for life, forlorn
And carried on the current
Survive the journey for the learning
Live to see the morrow
And where these two should meet unsweet
A moment left to capture
For all must eat lest they succumb
Benumbed to rote or rapture
O, but that the Master Poet would grant this rhyming couplet.
That we could bind the wounds of this broken heart
Wherein the beat of freedom and equality grows weak,
Enabling the meek, indeed to inherit what your love bestows
To all your children squabbling, silent, frightened, or benumbed
By prospect daunting or emboldened, lost among the ruin.
Children are resilient. And may we laugh again and play,
And build those castles, sand or stone, that time will surely wash asunder.
Still having made their purpose known to those whose matter waits
Upon that moving finger weaving time in writing what outlives the Fates.
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
…… 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
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! 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!
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.
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.
“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 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
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 –
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
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