And So What? Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

As for the overblown man,
who went wind-free
after killing a beggar
whom he spun out of his pith,

the sky is waiting with a torch
and wallowing flame
for him. Not everything
is even on earth, a pine always
taller than a red oak.

And so what? Life continues
on an elephant grass stalk
by a fleshy clay-filled eucalyptus tree,

its branches in the wind
shooing off birds on a swaying stalk,
when the sun burns out,
switching off a flashed light.

(ii)

Under the sooty umbrella
of a cloud expanding its wings
beyond its outer canopy,

ribs hold and drill down
darkness into its nailed roots -

so firm that nothing can
rip off its thick cloud of night
under a paste-glazed inner canopy

shading off light from
the crawling ant smashed by a paw,
when times snarl and growl.

A nimbus sits on a stratus,
whose screaming oversized wings
are not heard after a sky dance

of sparks and seafoam-edged
bayonets, a wobbly night

stirred by a ani's tail, when street lamps
have lost their voice
to pale gold eyes of light
turning ash over a slaying arm.

(iii)

And so what? Everything is uneven
on earth - even suns of the same size
swinging from angle to angle,

as darkness stretches out giraffe-long
necks and albatross-wing arms.

And night's crater grows deep
Into shredded arches of dark powder,
rolling and rumbling with bats

from an overhanging tree branch
thickening night's nook,

where a lightning-lifted slaying arm
does not bow out after
a bawling thunder ricocheting
against caves that only kill light.

And so what? The arm popped out
by lightning sits on the king's throne,
a knight snoring under his legs:

One-eyed life limps steadily
under a comet's overblown light.