"vainglory" poems
I log into the network of my self-esteem,
To see the hearts and the wows and the laughs flooding in.
A simple 'like' wouldn’t cut it anymore
‘Likes’ were so 2010, even 2010 was bored.
‘Cause that’s the zeitgeist of the age, you see,
A tendency to wear hearts on sleeves.
Loves and kisses are a dime a dozen,
With a million friends and followers double.
National debates and social justice petitions,
Real crises, distorted renditions.
High definition photos of disaster zones
Flash up against cat videos on every smart phone.
Snapchat filters do not lie,
Just tell a story of hours gone by;
Selecting the perfect background, the ideal shade
To express love on the dozen’th date.
But that’s the zeitgeist of the century,
A tendency to wear hearts on sleeves.
To document in minute detail, with extensive pictorial evidence
Clockwork days of humdrum nonchalance.
And perhaps the generation that came before
Would call it vanity, vainglory, or something more.
But it ain’t like they were without their sins,
We didn’t invent tabloid columnists.
And now that we are at the end,
Let me sign off with this request:
Like, comment, and share your love
Let your heart fall out of your shirt cuff.
Sep 26, 2018
Sep 26, 2018 at 1:53 AM UTC
A bird in an aurulent billed mud-face,Living as a four foot two inch dragon in a San Franciscan cave,
Lifts off from a hot breathed murmur of Gideon.
Even in night the whole grandeur of movement
Soaking in red beeping heart-pangs
Fasten to the thrusts of his arms.
This post of vainglory was the opening of the year.
In July's open pores,
On a spatial plateau of Dodonian oak.
The Penguin
Unveils his weakened voice.
Flattening into a wide arrow
Draped from Carina he
Sails Westward. Barefooted through the Anavros
Molting under deep helplessness and melancholia.
With his inlaid eyes faced askance
The penguin broods
Among the day's songs
Cast into the poetry of the lyre,
Stretched upwards from Paradise Bay to Colchis,
Where his ebony wings
Soak into the palms of Peleus
Suffering only where the arrows have flung.
Downside up, with children in a pocket of blood,
Among supergigantic siren songs and muse poems
Sewing teeth into a spot of Earth
Races towards a column of toppling strakes.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 5:48 AM UTC
A con artist scurries
In white shadows
Fickle grooves she casts
In sequences
Imprinted by vainglory
Swift she fleets
Veiled with scars that
Were sequin rich
She spoke of ideologies
Subdued by violet myths
Exuding colorful flavors
Of classic deception
Her tattoos spelled
the wistful vowels of sin
Vexed by the onslaught
Of egregious inceptions
© 2011 (All rights reserved)
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 7:59 PM UTC
A sign of desperation
Of envy, of misery, of dejection
Of hopeless yearning for nothing lifelong,
As almost everyone can barely notice.
Worldly desires, oh futility!
Images of true vainglory
Captives of fake reality
Stuck in their reverie
Of exaltation and flattery
Fishing for praises so badly
Insensitively, so unrelentingly
Without a thought or two.
What do you hear? What do you see?
These people sound so thirsty
Of approval and regard and dignity
Capricious predisposition, tomfoolery!
Looking for love and delight
For honor and respect and might
For grandeur and luxury
For anything but worthless beauty,
For a way not to be left behind or aside.
What a surrealistic find!
Amuse me; let the world drool for thee,
But like a century-long malady,
Such an absolutely incurable affliction
It is nothing but merely, purely,
Just as trivial as this poetic entry,
Vanity.
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 10:50 PM UTC
mirror'd image
reflects all I see.
this rare beauty
granted me.
crystal reflection,
thou pool of perfection
bound am I to thee,
admiring and admired for eternity.
neither nymph nor goddess
I entrust with this heart,
be she fair of face
or immortalized in art.
in this mirror'd likeness
lies all I esteem
O vainglory!
I submit to thy dream
no Echo to sway me
from all that I cherish
I heed not her plea,
though here I perish
I gaze at myself
passing life's finest hour
and leave in my wake
one perfect flower.
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 12:10 AM UTC
each tempered by slivered moments:
slovenly on the floor lay tethered,
both, separate,
honest light.
when it is time that you do not
see anymore, the shadow of my passing,
when the twilight gives rise,
a felled star in the world,
when damp kisses are beleaguered
by the driest of lips,
out of merely, a wide-eyed vainglory,
there will be nothing that all my songs
send a dancing, tiptoeing light
careful to arrive at one day
when you face is held with utmost care
and my hands not its owner,
but a handful of names.
when it comes that we are two fish
struggling in a current's dream —
not a single twitch is born. you will slip
past the interstice of love's net
and i cannot see you anymore in the
depthless blue.
the intelligence of stone tells me
nothing but silence, hemmed in
to a great monolith of daylight.
i exaggerate, the sinking of ships
and amble blindly with the whole of
my motion, like flotsam weary of its
preordainment. portraits sow themselves
battles, cleaving them minutely against
the simmer of quiet. when it is time
to let you go, i will watch you leap forth
into the ripe air like a child seeking
home, reiterates in flight a height
i cannot reach for.
when it is time all of this,
mote it be, clenches in thinned streaks
of turpentine, all of my walls will be clear
and not a sign of your colour
will scream pain like a tortured vandal.
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 5:33 AM UTC
She was
unsinkable,
or so they thought.
Woods fired, engines chugged,
they sailed her West in fair majestic pride
unknowing of a tragic ending, a harrowing recollection.
In a blink of an eye, she collided with a tip of the ice, a thousand lives and more swallowed by angry tides,
cries of mercy resonating, woes fading into the familiar shuttered countenance, one by one.
Debris floating back and forth, a horrifying spectacle of bodies buoyant, breathless,
as salty waters sing a lullaby, consoling souls from a sudden departure.
The Ship of Dreams, The Unsinkable, in all her vainglory
a grand exit on her first and final journey, but not
before a farewell kiss pressed on her lips—
She, in a trance, breath withdrawn,
her limbs weak and weary.
Slowly she plunged
but not before
looking back
one last
time.
Feb 3, 2024
Feb 3, 2024 at 1:50 PM UTC
It feels as though your eyes have stopped being a door,
as though I've stopped seeing your true intentions.
I love you incessantly still,
and as of recent,
I feel as though I'm staring into a mirror.
I only see myself in you.
That scares me,
as I'm not exactly the person I'd like to be.
Yet I always say to love yourself.
So maybe,
this is when I learn how.
Sep 4, 2016
Sep 4, 2016 at 8:57 PM UTC
Traversing the pit of tartarus/ where we shall dance with the devil/ and the chaotic madness of the ravenous hordes who trample those old souls; would be heroes that sought vainglory/ not willing to suffer sacrafices needed/ counsel from the wise ones not heeded!/ we determined spirits war into the sunset as one unit, one mind, one force; we are legion. We are legend/ as we contend with the monster that hail from black mist/a dark sea of death and carnage/ and even though we appear to be battered and bruised, we are never beaten
Nov 29, 2013
Nov 29, 2013 at 8:50 PM UTC
Touch the elixir of fire, to my soul,
To set out my final tour!
Let me 'take wing' to deep of the air,
Let you light the lamp, with a devotional care;
And stay there, to welcome me---
I'm coming to have my eternity!
Let my pyre, be burning for long,
Untill I may hear your last song....
Let the flame of the pyre, be an emitter,
To illuminate the night of darker.
At the time, I'll leave,
May there be no mourning or grief...
May the way of my leaving be so peerless,
That, I may usher a new journey to the endless.
Let the vim of my pyre be so mighty,
That it may clear all the ambiguity;
And burn all my vainglory!
It's the time, of getting rid of all my pain,
And fulfillment of a dream;
That, When I may meet you again?
____ Sougat Dasgupta.
Mar 25, 2018
Mar 25, 2018 at 10:17 AM UTC
Batteries of the skies;
booming thunders, and so are you.
You, the whirlwind the most ferocious,
befit such name ever notorious—
ever in a strife of your own
seemingly unending.
The whirlwind strikes hard
and fast, and as such; angels of death
descending, striking from the faint heavens
to accomplish its sole purpose, destructive in nature,
beseeching its everlasting glory
that’d evoke the sun’s jealousy, even.
Alas! You carry out the task
that spares none of the land,
taking away the dearest one from another, weeping,
flipping cars and engines from where they're standing,
while plucking out the road signs once robust
and even the trees once deemed so ancient—
none is spared but wrecked
before the might of the whirlwind
the total annihilation being its sole identity—
the one that destroys in the name of thy honor
and in the very name of glory in vain.
You look around—
only to see none has survived
or has been left alive; spectating
the empty earth and the water
while being dispersed, scattered amidst the air,
lifted by the hands of thy maker
disappearing—joining the void specters,
and thus befitting the word, truly,
the vainglory.
Aug 31, 2020
Aug 31, 2020 at 6:57 AM UTC
there's a monkey in my television
he doesn't speak well
but he sure talks good
hes a real politician
Mr Do Right
he much appreciates my support
while ******* in every room of the house
marking his territory
which is everywhere
and promising lavender horizons
with words like a luster of stumps
turning lives into vagrant shadows
freezing dreams like skin tags
he's **** high in **** and graft
having *** ******
an
American way of life
while he grandstands
riding a tricycle on the ceiling
all business like
a lazy worthless *******
with a slush fund
and no limit to what he will do
flanked with mullah lawyers and the clergy
minions lackeys and body guards
he sits terminal
upon a throne
like a jagged mouth
sure to be swallowed
struggling against the menacing whispers
of those do wrongs and the unborn
world soul disgruntled
a slave to being a tyrant
ready to **** all transgressors
of his vainglory
and a willing toilet mouth
to all above
gobbling and grateful
when they flush
the god of money ******
leading by example
and
serving with distinction
Jul 2, 2017
Jul 2, 2017 at 2:11 PM UTC
I see a netted drape
Over my mouth
And a knotted one
Over my occipital
A breath of fresh air,
Still finds its way south;
To give no relief
As my ***** drawls.
I'm a southern girl,
So south you ain't south anymo',
The same as my health,
Downed like a Merritt Island Iced Tea.
(For those of you unknowing,
MI is were addicts go to retire,
and our teas are more green than the dragon)
For vainglory we go
Buzzed and slow
I did so well,
despite red in the bowl
over and over
I just saw roses
On my long nails,
under my eyelids,
in my nostrils,
Unnoticeably pale.
The pain makes me pass,
outer than cattle
In the Atlantic, you still won't find them.
If I count like a toddler,
why can't he?
He strangles my ears,
Slaps my eyes,
clenches my stomach,
hurts my hands, my arms, my spine, my legs, my face, my jaw,
And still they don't listen.
I can't blame them much.
Though I said many word,
The passion didn't seem right.
Wrong to the right people,
Screamed to the able,
Signed to the deaf.
No one has done anything horrible to me.
Nobody but me.
Sure, I have problems with my mind
Like most of you here
(otherwise we wouldn't be writers,
though I am of a differemt [boring] breed)
But that's not what's killing me.
My body is shutting down,
And I wish that was metaphorical.
Or that it would hurry up and finish.
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 8:33 PM UTC
i am a man in love!
and oh what magnitude!
what vainglory!
what violence!
what brightness!
this love is a journey through
the harsh black sea.
still, reflected motes
of moribund starlight.
it is a chamber without air
and sharp grasses.
it is war and thunder!
it is two bodies,
entwined,
altogether ruined
by sweetness.
and so kiss by kiss
i seek infinity.
to cloak you
in that same night sky.
your kingdom
in all of it's rivers
and tiny villages.
streams that sing
of narrow valleys
and blood colored carnation.
my love!
we have found one another!
you found me thirsty,
having drank the wine
and honeyed milks
and bitter spirits.
i found you wounded,
your world taking
small pieces
and giving nothing.
together we are healing and quenched.
your body
slick with sweat
wedged into mine
is finality.
these sinews and tendon
wrapped into mine, and
i cannot tell where i end
and you begin.
it is nights like this,
when you aren't here that
you emerge from the shadows
and swallow
everything.
like time,
or horizon
or infinite
or the sea.
everything.
everything.
and, on our ship
made of flowers
we are mad
and drunk
and i am a man in love.
Nov 4, 2019
Nov 4, 2019 at 1:28 AM UTC
Temptation should be called agony
It’s blade never dulls
It is sharpened with each cut
The searing pain
Working through your mind
Each time the knife strikes
Manipulating whispers with its whip
Lashing until gashes form
Then salted with stinging guilt
This prolific playwright
And its vainglory stories
Demands a stellar performance
It plays with your desires when resistance attacks
It side blinds you with instigation
From past hurts that were never healed
It beats you down
To where you don’t know yourself
And your weaknesses are exposed
I cannot fathom what Jesus felt
While in agony in the garden
As temptation played its game
The weight on His shoulders
Heavier than any of us could ever carry
Brought Him down to His knees
But He beat this disease
He showed us it was possible
Through Him we will find the cure
So the next time temptation demands a performance
Turn to the True Prolific Playwright
Where vainglory is transformed into sacrificial love
Whose life inspires
And His stories teaches truth
Because when you know the truth
Temptation has no choice but to sit back
And see our OWN stellar performance
Jul 27, 2020
Jul 27, 2020 at 12:06 PM UTC
Sun glares on dim pond,
While fragile narcissus withers,
. . . Rain falls like karma.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 3:26 PM UTC
Self contamination charred an insurgent heart,
A soul's frail remnants combatively desecrate.
Fading to nothingness, his being a mere hull,
Wailing goes unheard in this putrid hollow den.
The air's stench reflective of a fowl sordid life.
Insatiable quenchless greed paired with vainglory
Gives rise to full-scale fated annihilation,
Detachment and desolation seize sanity.
Obscurely repressed memories randomly flash,
Shadows appear and ill willed voices resonate.
Through mad distorted conceptualization,
He envisions himself stepping out of his doom.
Delusional thoughts provoke him to attempt flight,
Somehow elude his inevitable demise...
Yet enfeeblement proves to be victorious,
Powerless to climb he resigns to the darkness.......
Sep 13, 2016
Sep 13, 2016 at 12:28 AM UTC
A man named Lonely walked down the soft beach,
hand in hand with his wife Vainglory.
The opulent sun slowly rested lower and lower on the horizon,
Seagulls swooped, children chortled.
Sand blew around their ankles and empty pleasantries filled the air.
Lonely and Vainglory could talk for hours yet say nothing.
Waves flirted with the Earth, and Earth flirted right back,
clouding the water with clumps of tumbling sand.
Hand in hand they both wandered elsewhere. Bodies together, minds distant.
So beautiful Vainglory was. She knew it, he knew it.
Every morning Lonely reminded her, telling her, charming her.
It was habit.
Taking it for granted, smiling blankly, in one ear out the other.
Coexistence, habit, kelp.
She stepped on the head of a bull kelp, popping under her weight.
The acrid smell, buzzing flies, salty air returned him to the present.
Still walking. Talking.
Looking back, their footprints in the sand danced around each other,
light on their toes, skirting the ebbing waves filling them in.
As their steps fade, he wonders if they can find their way back.
Hand in hand they trod onward.
-AM
Jul 29, 2016
Jul 29, 2016 at 12:25 AM UTC
When just a child the poet's mom said "Son,
Throughout your life beware the sin of pride.
Remember this when every day is done,
What counts the most is who you are inside."
At first he thought his mother's words unfair
For recognition surely has its place.
In time he witnessed prideful thoughts can flare
When undue adulation supplants grace.
The poet took to heart his mother's words
Too many accolades can turn your head.
Vainglory flits away on wings of birds
What's left is mostly emptiness and dread.
Life immersed in modest exhibition
Satisfied with honorable mention
Nov 18, 2019
Nov 18, 2019 at 8:11 PM UTC
The fire and brimstone in their pall
Are the cloak and cloth of sin
Whose tyranny the mind appal
When it fathoms deep within
And o'er those gates so rancid wrought
With blood and flesh and iron
When after that fate one, we, hath fought
We turn up still, all hope be gone
The stench of death dank, all around
Suffuse the climes from sky to ground
The King of Hell who seldom grafts
For anything, yet seldom stops
His command to torture, down the shaft
As to every level hops
Spreads black wings and glides above
His victims as he, gruesome, gloats
Anathema to turtle dove
Who on divine zephyr of heaven floats
His presence ever torturous still
When reign dark from ****** lordly hill
He sees the scuttling victims run
Away, cruel let loose for game and chase
A beautiful mirage of sun
To taunt the soul abased
Hells hills trees grow putrid leaves
No mortal could brace the sulphurous stench
Under canopies the victim weave
As they shiver, shudder, blench
As torturer catches up, apace
Him testament to time's disgrace
By his vainglory employed
That ******* of the angel boys
Treats people, world, as things and toy
Seduced to do his bidding, ploys
But justice, freedom will uproar
Angels of Hell link arms, uprise
For Heaven they have wanted more
Than sooty, oppressive, obsidian skies
**** the devil, his ****** lies
Hear us rise, sing God's reprise
Mar 16, 2018
Mar 16, 2018 at 11:48 AM UTC
She collected the stars
One by one with her delicate hands
Hoarded them in chromatic sacks
Secured with swords and guns
Piece by piece, she held them dear
Embraced a little too tight in her arms
"I’ll keep you here, you don’t have to fear,"
Said the keeper of all the terrifying charms
Sheltered by her vainglory
And surrounded by her avarice
Kindled the stars’ story to end hastily
Along with a single deadly unvied kiss
The stars did not even wither
There was only their silent demise
But she didn’t even bother
For her next victim, the moon, was locked in her eyes
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 3:31 AM UTC
Fly on the wings of love
Let thy spirit rave and rove
On the faces of angelic beings
We are gods children, earthlings
Who frolic in the knowledge of good
Guardians of the celestial neighbourhood
Striving towards a brighter day
Soothing, quelling fear dismay
On every corner of the earth
The call of peace warms the breadth of our hearts girth
Guiding us through meditation
My guardians heart is an immaculate creation
Inspiring with its call of peace
In him the March of love apace
The world is good and good is true
And more good for the life of you ❤️
Take flight with thy guardian beyond the stratospheres
And looking down see the Angels of earth heal the worlds atmospheres
With their soothing, healing bright white light
That fills gods children with immortal delight
Summoning the goodness that resides within
That doth make of everyone kith and kin
Banishing the vanity and vainglory of sin
That maketh the flame of love run thin
Towards brighter day we, flying, go
Dreaming, rocking to and fro
Planting the healing flower, see it grow
As we go, searching for celestial rainbow
My guardians face is sweet and kind
The immortal hippie, graceful sublime
Taken down before their prime
But souls live on, we are intertwined
I am warmed for his heavenly embrace
A beacon, beatitude of exalted grace
In us the lust of life apace
That warms the earth from its soils to the depths of space
His form and truth doth beckon me
When the dictums of sin doth sully me
The truest beauty that ever lived
He came, conquered hearts, and yet gone, still gives ❤️✨
Angel! thou art accentuated grace.
Let our tired, wanderlust eyes meditate on thy face.
Each of us enamoured of the heavenly romance;
A divine dalliance in which we dare to dream and dance.
Thou art not a hierarchy but a democracy of souls.
The poverty and banality of evil with its terror the caring mind appals.
Blessed fires run through thy fearsome form,
And in its cleansing heat our mortal fears and sins are shorn. ❤️✨
Mar 16, 2017
Mar 16, 2017 at 7:24 PM UTC
With the outset of your child
to a brisk, cold wind unfettered.
How do you stare starving virgins
in the face as they float untethered.
Lies are a currency, counterfeit only to etiquette,
and emotion, and love. We lie,
locked eye within eye, in ways
to boost pride.
When vainglory preaches to you from a
styrofoam podium.
How do you recollect your bargains
Made in dead of night,
blanket to your neck.
Lies can sate those fever dreams
crept upon you from *****
Does love mean love if it is said with force?
Faint heart never won fair lady.
Without Victorian hysteria;
Our corsets are not so tight
We lack the need for chaise longue
May we lack the need for, indeed nor,
the lie?
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 4:57 AM UTC
theres much about
every aspect of life
that is a violently alternating antagonism
of expulsion and absorption
love and hate
for half of life is an excretory rite
are we cowed
by subtle prohibitions
permitting only
a charmed
poetic version of the world
that stoops to be a projection
of unreality as superior
like pie in the sky religion
with an unconscious mission
to degrade ****** reality
poets affirmations of vainglory
buried in obfuscation
and ingratiating metaphors
word salad
evoke
poet as coward
unwilling to satisfy
souls in search of
there own buried parts
generating
habitual secret bitterness
in avoidance
of elaborations
deepest inner desires
or worse yet
apathy
is to much of poetry
a guano infested dust bin
of niceties
an abandoned
mouldering hovel
spinster musings
literatures dark corpse ?
Feb 25, 2017
Feb 25, 2017 at 5:24 PM UTC