A Punch Of Light Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In the widening desert,
where seeds of snores grow
into sands scraping off
goo from gripping sleep,

I've been trying to catch
sleep that has lost
wings all afternoon, shedding
only afterfeathers

of throttled snores on slow
wheels steered to the shores
of a creeping insomnia.

I've been trying to catch
that of bird of sleep to fly me
to a nest high up a Hyperion tree
far off my shrub of a bed,

where I've been rolling
like a heavy log in an unfeathered wind.
O typhoon, flip out your wings
and roll me into sleep.

(ii)

But only cotton balls
and light feathers of a zephyr
tap me with foamy hands,

my eyes growing as strong
as stone, a screen
of dark rock scraping me,

punching my creeping sleep off
my eyes of light ash
floating in a wind of smoke

not strong enough
to knock me off the gradient
of a snoring locked sleep.

(iii)

Sleep, put on your dark cloak
of scented feathers
with hearth-warm palms
to plunge me
into an island of sleep.

But as arms of sleep begin
to rock me on a lap
of silence, a muscular pointed fist

of light from the flashlight
of a car at the parking lot
nudges me off my cliff of sleep.