A Building In Snowy Hands Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(building turned hillock in snow)

(i)

The building drifting across
The parking lot,
Way out on the other side
Of the broad-bellied street,
Stands in its brown body,
A day mountain.

A rising tree trunk of brittle bricks,
Clinging to no wall,
But wind that waddles through,
A duck riding
No bicycle of air, but floating
Along with a swagger.

Growing tall and short
With sun slamming
Down an axe of a ray
To lift it up to highest air,

As a rheumatic-fingered
Tornado lifts it gently
To hang down, as if without
The podgy legs
That stands it broad-buttocked
And spear-headed,

As it sometimes rises fast
Like a rocket in full flight -
Only to fall back
Flat on its feet, when it snows.

(ii)

And it crawls all day
Like a baby soon to walk.

Under a cloud falling
With fog so low, to dwarfing it
Into a half bungalow
And stitched and woven cottages
Squeezed into a row of huts.

Sinking into earth behind
The shrubby trees
And stemmy grasses
Makes its way loudly,

Streaks Of snow bombarding
Earth with white
And cream spray, making
Their way to waste

In piled lumps mounting
Low hills and digging river-
Carrying valleys of thawed snow
To break down into
An eroded landscape.

(iii)

Stretching, stretching
With a cracked floor scratching
Its chest all day, as feet
And tires tramp on its back

Screaming under half-eyed light
From fleeing sunrays
Melting into graphite clouds
Building a tentacled house

To swim in air, as it snows
And drizzles
With flying light whips
Flogging a trotting horse
Of air limping and footslogging

With a day driven
By a stony, heavy drunken head
And the whisked tail
Of an overfed elephant
Ambling along gray-haired grass

Aging with more falling
Bundles of ashy show
From fires of cold ignited
By the blowing mouths of winds

Making other buildings skip
With the lightness of cicadas
At play on a stretchy meadow
Narrowing into deserted streets

Carrying shroud-veiled cars
Sniveling with screeching tires
Breathing out smoke to dwarf
The building across the street.

Standing on soft legs
With breaking bones and torn flesh,
As whips of snow flog
The rising galloping horse
Of earth smacked and slapped

By palms of wind-pushed snow
Lifting a building
Like a giggling baby rocked
In the brushing, fondling air,

Brewing love from a heart's volcano
To raise a building
High up into thick dye-sprayed air
Brushing a building's bowed head.