In This Cloud Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In this bloated
ball of cloud
spreading out

its wingspan
to the rumble
of death's volcano


flowering the land
with sprinkles and showers
of lost love.

Carrying only hot coals
in a bubbling nimbus.

O cloud on the road,
the only boat
carrying a drowned people
still drowning themselves

in lakes spilling waters
to raise
darker clouds to kill

stars in a moon-lit
sloped wall of night
collapsing on mantis' legs

into fast-wheeled roads
growing flamy
gardens of death
in files
of smoke from eyes

and ears,
as cinders stumble
into throats

sinking sullage
gulped down
by grumbling mouths.

Pouring out
only hooting owls
and gonged cuckoos
on jumping roads.

(ii)

Quivering with truckloads
taupe rocks of crates
stacked on each other

with tight-lipped bottles
to trap more lads
into a spinning engine

to throttle lips
into stringed clouds of silence
igniting bonfires
to crown the king in a tree,

a throne growing
to pierce a ceiling with no star -

(iii)

In this cloud
hanging over my desk,

a chain creeping
on my neck
with stinging caterpillars.

In this cloud
stitched by a breeze
from a red drip,

a cyclone
shot by a yawn
from my burning home
in embers.

I cringe to you
with a handful
of silence

falling in cascades
of a storm

in my shirt's pocket
bleeding
with a red quill
on the tip of a birdy pen.

(iv)

In this cloud
of a man
spreading his wings

over hawks dragging out
a dead lad
no longer wallowing
in his storm
of life, the sailing flames

drifting him
to man's moony eyes
in a blinding
sunlight swinging
whetted lances of rays.