The Starling And The Snake Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

An aircraft has gone
into a feline's roar,

panthers and leopards
howling and growling
under a thunder

slashed by a lightning
with a civet-eyed torch

pointing to a slug's home
flung over
down in the bushes.

A starling has flown
a blue sky
to land on a sheet's strip,

the jet's tailplane of a thought
rumbling without
its cockpit in the pieces
of a wind on fast wheels.

Love is a cannibal
with supersonic legs
racing into a pit

in a broken roaring chest
spinning songbirds
in a whispering, warbling tree

growing branches
rolled off by the arms
of a gale woven
with threads of breeze.

(ii)

Speed carries brakes
to crawl mantis-light wheels
with the speedy

slow steps of the slug
cutting off
a hiss's gusty cruise,

when a flying leaf
wraps up the slug
with a smiling ropy hands
drifting to the blue starling

carrying a sky's sheet
of love to fly along
a crooning river, the pace
of a hiss finding its kiss

in the mouth of an eagle,
as the slug clothed
in the storm on a grinning
woman's clasped hands.

(iii)

In a shade of night
under clumps of warm leaves,
the slug crawls quietly
on a starling's song of sky,

a fast hiss swallowing itself
in a fleeing eagle's mouth,

as the big bird flaps flamy wings
down a valley.

A man's slug
bathes in the hot wind
of a cruising lover,

when life crawls
on a slug's wheels, glowing eyes
telling the partner:

(iv)

This breeze of a ship
will ride us
through bumps of waves

steered by a starling's wings
carrying a sky of love,

the cannibalistic stokes
and brushes
of a hissing snake

wriggling under a hawk's
eyes sipping the fast love
that devours itself,

as it leaves the slug
to fly with a starling's
whispered song

between clasped hands
in love's sky,
where a slug on a ropy hand
climbs the tall mountain of a fondle.