A Ride To The Moon Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(as we ride down into Solitaire, Namibia)

(i)

I've been sleeping
and weaving my breath
into short jerky coughs
through wriggling
threads of dust,

as our car rumbles down
a soft moony slope
to a stretch of moon,

a flat edge of the world heaving
tails of fleeing stretched land
we race after to flung
wings of a melted horizon.

Gray dove wings spin
a sky of ash and light sheets
spraying mid-air
with soft-haired chicks of dust.

Now the world cracks
And height is razed
into basil tufts of shrubs

sprinkled and rallied
like hunchbacks
congregated for a back-breaking
worship, as they bow down
to the deep silence of a ritual.

(ii)

The road clatters
with jumping gravel and pebbles,
horses neighing
by our clinking chassis.

A flat sea of land drifts
in onto our shores,
waters unfolding
a rolling growling snarling

piece of cloth on floating
light bleating and baaing
with wools of air,

a meadow shaving watery dust
in rising heat waves.

(iii)

Folding over ribs and knot-edged
bones breaking softy
down a swelling hill's rockface

staring at us in ridges
of wrinkles louder than a flare.

Sunken faces of rocks
on hills attired in moss,

eroded furrows flowing
with powdered gravel
and streams of wind-floated dust.

(iv)

The world has bounced
to its collapsing end,
handing over
life to tufts of juniper
and moss shrubs shifting

with white mists aging
them into beards
from the chins
of settled cream dust

We've landed on the moon,
Armstrong's module
a huge bird of a car eaten
and spat out by dust.

And left to erect wind flags
over a pack of metal rust.

We've landed on ash, cream
clouds of dust hovering
over a fire baking a dry mat
of land woven with fibers

into a rolling smooth moon's face,
an old rusty car barking
with the molars of a broken dog.