A Chase In The Bush Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Exploded, he dives
into a nimbus,
jumps out
of a volcano's mouth

flushing out
flowery bubbling flames
powdering him with soot.

On quaking, quivering
legs breaking
under his boulder-
trailing waist,

the young man melted
into himself,
the lad folded up
into a pangolin of fear.

The man hardens
into stone,
the only animal
man cannot kill, shooting
or burning into ash.

Wrapped in a rainbow,
the only spectrum
to throw him into fast
rivers of thought
to drift him to a nook,

as he flees with wings,
he cannot grab
a tall tree to flip him
into the highest star.

(ii)

The boy dives
into a graphite cloud,
boots tiptoeing
his horse strides,

as he jumps and thrusts
himself into thicker bush,
and flips over
a deluge of tumbling
elephant grass

and breaking flying
stems and old corn
stalks trailing
his body-ploughed path.

With his horny head,
he butts his way through,
melts down to size,
slims himself down
to a gliding worm.

He catapults himself
over taller grasses
through the buzzes and rattles
of his last breath,

and whizzes from a slashed
life in mist and haze,
as he rolls over

his pool and swamp of blood
into a deep valley.

(iii)

The young man,
a breathless log,
is dragged off

by three taupe
hippo men,

who cleave
and rip him
into pieces, the only birds

of him with no wings,
but can still fly
beyond horizons,

a mountain rising to toss
him over a peak
into the clouded red tail
of a bird in ashes.