A Heavy Cloud Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Staggering mountains on seas,
rivers running through bed rooms
and floating wobbling cabins.

A volcano explodes
into elephant flowers.

Under a moon-lit sky,
in a nebula of dinosaurs
and antlered beasts,
a heavy cloud flips out
emerald and frost branches,

as I pick fruits
from a cloudy tree,
its leaves and flowers

stretching branches
to build a nook for me,
as I search
for afterfeathers.

A storm of scarlet
and pink specks
hang above a volcano

spilling various shades of magma
in flying specks,

a spectrum of feathers
fitting into a bird's wings.

(ii)

A typhoon of feathers spiral
and twirl over a deep crater,
from which an elephant explodes

into light with the full wings
of a nightingale to sing dawn's choral.

As clouds weave clouds
above masses
of fog stretching
into a hurricane of feathers,

I scoop out sun rays
to illuminate the tree, a harbor
for the chanting wing-flapping bird
perched on the tree's crown.

(iii)

My cubicle's tree pulls in walls
to squeeze space
into a silent studio with a soft voice

that whispers to me
for larger space to fit the tree.

I burn schema and tropes
into my brain and hang
them like labelled fruits to be eaten
from slots on the tree.

As I craft and draft
crab-like crawling
chains of fruits to fit

into shaky hands to sculpt
the starry bird
to take a reader through dim
branches carrying feathers.