Hoary Poems

A DECREPIT JELLYFISH DREAMER

Many mountains, seas, women, and dollars made
But for you only was each moment played
An aged wine flask, your decrepit skin cracks
As flaccid muscles bend your creaking back
Hard hammer toes hamper your stiff walking style
Toilet king, bilious bombard of bile
Fog obscures your mind, only to rise again
Wishing for many things which might have been
Stung as by tzetse flies you cannot forget
Fantasies won’t revive corpses of regret
Too late, with dreams drooling down your hoary chin
Awaken to the state you are now in -
A dream without legs, with all hope beyond reach - 
A jellyfish sunbathing on a beach.

haiku : protea

haiku : protea

 ~N A T I O N AL  flower~

hoary pinky Proteus

 ** sticKy **

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Fly Me To The?

Mine was a somewhat humble Holy Grail.
For forty years, I hoped to see a plane
fly right across the moon. I hoped in vain.
Though once I got to see a vapour trail
bisect the orb, I couldn’t quite prevail.
Like Joey Starrett, running after Shane,
It seemed to me the gods might preordain
a lifelong disappointment. Would they fail
to humour me? It all looked pretty bleak.
One hoary April morning, just last week,
on glancing up, I broke my losing streak!
Flamed by a sun which, here, had not yet risen,
a tiny aircraft, shining with mystique,
flew through the moon, and smashed my earthbound prison.

Awe,age

     The irony of life and love, 
tricks played on trusting souls
 by a heartless prankster.

 I didn't even know what I didn't know. 

 I longed to play the music of your heart and body
 with magical, skillful hands. 
Youth, full of vigor, bluster. 
Heads full of air, light as eagles feathers 
and just as beautiful. 

The hoary head has earned wisdom. 
Now that I understand this game,
 I sit alone with no one to play with.
 No teeth to instill fear
 nor smile that brings butterflies.

 Finally, seeing perfectly, 
we can't command the stage 
but must give over to the air heads, 
the collective "us" of the past. 

Awe...age. Hearty-har-har.

Vapour

Vapour

While I sit lonesome at the water’s sprawl,
crepuscular rays have the heaven’s sigh,
as golden hues descend on evening’s crawl,
and soften the edge of a fading sky.

A gentle mist ascends above the lake,
to veil twilight’s plunge with a hoary shroud,
slowly curbing my vista to opaque,
while swans shelter unruffled in a crowd.

A sailboat drifts athwart my vision lines,
winding in patterns delicate and slow,
clutching the air, adapting to the signs,
an ambling dance as the leeward winds blow.

In this serene and tranquil atmosphere,
my thoughts like vapour gently disappear.

Only the Unremembered will Remember You

Give me a memory
that never did occur,
not to you or anyone else.

Life is full of recollections
they sprout like scenic views
of a dead planet.
The past is only resurrected
by the already dead.

When you pass go
you have not left the prison
you have jumped back into it.

O my poor dead lovers,
my enemies and pals.
O all those poor begotten weeds
of momentary flesh,

let us once more besiege
any musty, old curiosity shop
beg a hoary taxidermist,
once more
for an everlasting history
of all that never was.

The Human Seasons

Four seasons fill a year’s fullness of time
  and fills the core of human shell and gourd -
in that season of youth’s Spring balm its prime 
  will reap the honied hive of years endured.
And golden Summer so brightly spangled
  from whence its firstfruits cling the swollen vine,
lest it not plucked lays withered and tangled
  only to fall a seed in rain and shine.
For the reach of time rings the culling tree
  when Autumn its rich shedding off has cast -
so begins the end, a fading glory
  in the long shadows of lusting days past.
Winter too, when the cold hoary bark wets 
and the pale mortal sun upon me sets.


               Written: May 2011



Inspired by The Human Seasons by John Keats

Kindle that love

All the rhythmic beats of the heart were wet 
The happiness of your return is in the happiest tears

In the silent cloudy pond of the blue sky of the green veins
My excitement enjoys a bath of nirvana 

There is no pair of pigeons 
There is no familiar thatched dome
The hunter-cat is also gone
There is no dance and chirping of the little birds
No bamboo dale where our imaginative ghost lives
The heart is the withered bridge after smoking the tobacco leaf 
Now the smoke from the chimney is like a white cloud
Where empty notebooks are life's detailed conclusions

Your arrival in this open chin of the epic evening
Your feet touch the heart of hoary loneliness 
No door, no window but your calling bursts through the darkness
The extinguished lamp is burning in this apathetic pen

Come, come to the atonal heart by tuning the Krishna flute
Come O Lady Lakshmi Swarupini, come to the soul soothe 
Kindle that love lamp by the bit of your lenient heart
May the lost past will be treasured in the embers dart


©Mahtab Bangalee
January 20, 2025
Chattogram

A Gray Light Sparkles

Branches thatch a spackled sky.
Snow lays itself down
to sleep lightly.

An airborne coyote-itch addles
drops of sunlight
until they drizzle.

Splatters of graying-green
on the hairy chops of groundhogs
as they scrape up a scant buffet.

One Scarlet Cardinal bobs,
its ruby flounced headdress
scattering scads of frost.

Winter shucks its hoary hide,
stepping through a muddy mirage
of Spring.

Fanged winds pounce.
Puddles of rain return to ice.

On lunch, munch, and punch

And leaving all else,  they debate on lunch.
To one, lunch time was waste, hence, break-less munch.
The other felt, lunch-less
Would no new glory bless
To UK, nor hoary 
Return to old glory,
Lunch is a place mid-stream--  
Island to which all swim,
If cooler breaks are fine,
Need for lunch-break’s genuine,
For, from stomachs come working peoples’ punch.
____________________________
Happenings |20.12.2024|humour, food

Poet’s note: The prime minister and the leader of opposition are usually at logger heads, and British parliament is no exception. A few days back they exchanged their verbal punches on lunch and need to break for it. No doubt, no lunch is free--at home nor work nor anywhere, still…. This ditty is in full favour of lunchbreaks that refuel and decompress.

Winter's Coming Kiss

A-rush
In a feather ruffling frenzy
cooling the flamboyant sunrise
muffling the warblers
with waffling winds

chilling the audience
in an ice-like stare
your shivery essence
ricochets through the canyon

startles the cliffs
bellows amid the echoes
of yesteryears challenge
stirs a red dust devil

they call you cold, December
for they are frail
and cannot bear the sting
of Winter’s hoary kiss

Splintered Sunlight

Step into splintered sunlight
broken beams flash
across bare, silhouetted flesh.

Above
Father-Sun forever scintillates,
a deep and ancient ember,
giving ceaselessly to all
wanting nothing in return.

The trees, they dance
in verdant splendor,
leaning lazily, they sigh
with utter contentment.
Their leaves, a chorus
of flapping green,
each one moving to its own rhythm,
closely listening to the wind sing.

White stars illuminate my eyes
and echo through my soul.
Vibrations shudder down my spine,
utterly with rapture so
cosmic and cyclopean,
spinning through the wheel-vortex
of my open amethyst crown.

And with sweet natural bliss, at last,
under holy bodhi tree of life --
copper-domed and ancient,
grown hoary and sere
through countless millennia --
my buddha-mind will yet arise,
through the heavens,
past the skies,
and slowly gaze
with wisdom eyes
upon the all-expansive Whole.

This worldly plane is just a school,
a dream where all is mind.
Be present, aware, and most of all,
compassionate and kind.

For everything in this world is one,
the Universe is inside us.
If pure of heart, we seek our truth,
the Universe shall guide us

Pathetic Fallacy

It is fallacious to pretend 
we contrive to “become ourselves” 
when there’s no one to observe us.

Mere mice with conceits of grandeur 
prowling proud like cats in the night -
Hubris holds high its hoary head. 

We are ever just whom we are,
we can’t be more and can’t be less
until finally we are not.

start the bidding

While D.T.'s old image was bold
His weird rants seem hoary and cold
If campaign funds fade
The next asset trade
Is having Melania sold

Why would he throw away caution?
Seems like he’s got brain exhaustion
While human slave trade  
Appears retrograde
This artifice needs an auction

In death equal made

Cinders of no edifice can show proof 
How hoary did it look under the dome, 
Nor dust can vouch if it came from tall roof 
Of a hallowed church, or from poor man’s home, 
Or if the dust was blown by a tiny 
Burst of rare breeze, or by world wind so great,
No warden would vouch for its pedigree, 
Nor would a priest predict its sublime fate, 
So does the ash of a funeral pyre—   
If it peeled off a prince in regal suit, 
Or off a pauper that died a death dire, 
For, hushed up dusty graves lie stony mute,
And death cometh equal as gasping breath, 
Levelling all— if not in life, in death. 
_________________________________ 
Sonnet | 01.11.2011, revised August 2024 |

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