A Poet's Moony Workshop Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A moon drops its cotton mass
on my desk, rolls its ball
into beige and silver
shafts, rays digging into rays.

Thin rods of sun and half-suns
breaking into angled
wrinkles of a poem still floating
in its oversized robe,

its wig falling off with a meronym
dancing like an over-dusty
butterfly drowning in a dress

with no sleeves and no tubes
for legs to stand on the umpire
of a hyponym rising too low,
touching no ceiling

to make a roof tropes collapse
into thick-bodied wasps
to sting and crucify a protagonist.

(ii)

O bright light pushing off
dim and whitened powder,

feathers slimming into vanes and barbs
and ashes ground into smoke
and light-bodied light.

Filtering shady corners
Into exploding corners of old

as I dig into the scribbles
and squiggles of overflooded ink
catching a shivering bird

lonely in the cold nest of a poet's
frozen thoughts, creeping
ice blocks of empty spaces shouting

for peonies and magnolia
to light up a night of mind still
creeping out from a cave
into bright melting wax.

Expanding drifting lakes of light
drowning hanging
shadows of photos and pictures

Walls in the study
are a splayed sky of stars
falling on me,
breaking into chards.

with exploded splashes
of light flooding
a bight of books rising above
rivers and lakes of ink,

these waterways giving the poet
little leeway for a poem
sitting in no floating foggy vessel,

but a big sky-eyed eagle
standing on its claws - pecking
at a reader's airplane brain
landing with a paddled bobbing canoe.