A Flaming Bicycle's Ride Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(to a fallen victim on a highway)

(i)

George, I know you were
abandoned in a deep cave under
mountains of boots

ridding you like a broken
bicycle with jerky foot pads
that hammered down from a knee's

slams and jams falling
on your neck to flatten you out
into air you couldn't breathe.

Gored by the hate of heat
that rose from a hearth
of wrath, scarlet coals burning
on the fiery and flaming soles

of a cops' boot-wearing knee
that rose and fell on you
with the weight of heavy shears

heaving the unbreakable
steel rod of life. But it held on until
you flung out a call
that fell on the sinking crater

of man's conscience,
deaf ears deep orifices, where reason
decamped to sleep

on a breezy beach, as a cops' knee ride
scaled up gear on a stony neck.

(ii)

How much of stone were you
when the hardened cops
ended his ride in a garden's scheme
of faces, thorny flowering plants

widening their arms
on a sky's expanding tray of sadism
with mane and a growl waving stars
along ditches and gulches?

We're all stones rolling down
slopes of hate, climbing back through
ladders of love condensing

into our stoic stoneship, as we sail back
to stroke and fondle
bruises and wounds on a stone's face,

sails from a vessel in a storm
on a highway's stretch of rumbling sea,
see-sawing waves on a highway.

The waves mount on the backs of wales
footslogging in the boots
of sculpted men planted to flip out
owls' hooting eyes drumming sadism.