A Storm Of Scars Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Popped out of a hole
or dropped by a wandering
soot of cloud?

Wind-fed children breathe
with balls of eyes
flashed at rivers of deserts

flowing off to longer-stretched deserts,
siblings and widows lost
in dark clouds spinning the tornado
to lift them into nests of soft hands.

It's been raining all night,
their nostrils widened
into deep caves

for a petrichor running through
garden stalks and leaves
spun to capture rainbows
carrying cardinals and starlings,

(ii)

The children lie and die a little
in the hot sun
melting off craves for fondles
and feathers from flying hands.

They spill, split and chop
winding lightning swords into
chards and pins that scratch
and etch out tattoos of love

at the lions and leopards of nostalgia
clawing them through the storm
of a night without eyes.

They splay their wounds like trumpets
of deep hibiscus flowers

they cannot blow for a tune
to open sluicegates for a river's flow.

They brandish flowers of bruises
and cuts on their backs,
storms of scars blowing up
their spines into crawling ants.

(iii)

These ants split and spit out
flat centipedes of bruises
and spiders of scars

to race with
albatross wings in full flight

shot from nests of children
walking within themselves
and never beyond

their borders to the pimple-skinned
arms that could blanket
them in their cold with a grin
as round as a butterfly's twirl.

These scars plant palisades
round the flowery stretch
of a wink to plant a tree
to stretch out

its hundred branches of arms
for a firm grip in a galloping storm.

These scars like arrows
from blood-shot eyes thrown off
like ship shanks

for a timely nightly knot
only tightens the noose on life
from a deep hole.