A Tired Afternoon's Stretch Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Let it be the night
torn and shredded
by lightnings' lime swords

swung and sunk
deep into the sky's ink cloak.

Let it be the spade
of a dark beam
from a silver cloud
to scoop out from an onyx,

the dark drifting rod
to break and peel off

a swinging chart
of frolicking stars.

(ii)

Wearing the clothes
of hovering hawks

amid black birds
coughing out soot
in a midnight cave.

O let me sleep
covering my bleached body
of bones and cones
rising amid sand dunes
and crawling shells

with a plain weave
oil blanket to roll me

into the grease throat
of a valley.

O open me out through
metal doors to trees,

a dawn's hilly beach
falling on me with a splash
of sun's whale mouth.

(iii)

Pushed by the typhoon jerk
of a short breath,
let me stand on pillars

on its mountain
to toss me into the waves

of a magazine's pages
I can no longer
flip through, when silhouettes
stitch my eyes

into a tornado of sleep
that snores
with the drums of a gale
colliding with banana leaves.

And raises me onto
an elephant's trunk
ambling on bumps
across sand dunes.

In this stretching desert of sleep
steered by caravans
trotting with half legs,

camels spinning necks
into furrows, a davenport's arms
stretching out dunes
on my rolling rumbling pillows.