A Skyglow-Faced Man Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Like these strings of beads
pouring down the bird wing face
of a drenched-and-dried man

woven into the knot
of a flame rising from a peek,
when a wick turns on
a bearded and bushy flame

interlaced with threads
of smoke sneaking in and out.

All begins and ends
in the mountainous davenport

molding a shredded man
back into the breadth
of seas stretching out ropy arms
swollen by rolls of waves.

A skyglow carries
a light to a deep cocoon
shrinking into a rat's tail,

the rat's whiskers
flashing flooded sunlight
into a burrow housing a mole.

(ii)

Are these the teeth
that have burrowed into
earth's wounds,
these tunnels leading

to the flashed light
of a buried star heating up
grumbles of shredded glows

oozing out
with flowers from the tails
of lorikeets and rollers?

In the sparks
of drawled twitters
and whispers,

when a voice with trumpeted
calls from sun-sprayed shores
ricochets from a brow
in the deep burrow of sleep,

where moths melt life
into a lily-flanked road
ending with mounds
and bonfires of fire gingers.

(iii)

Pulling out wrinkled
and dented cheeks from deep nights
brewing night
beneath the coal-tiled floor

A crater's bottom
shines and beams too
with wriggling silent springtails
that point to life

beating drums as it strikes
a larva's face,
a world of creeping dancers

breathing in red lava
that flies with a cardinal
dressed in glowing flames.

How a man digs
into a davenport's lap to find
a flower-flanked bleeding
river of past memories

dumping its red ink
into a lidless volcano to burst
into a skyglow, as the man sinks
further into a dent
in the oversized crawling davenport.