A Voracious Gale Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

It's been raining outside, wet streaks
In shapes of daddy long legs
Bouncing through the window
To bite everything on their way.

At the flower's whimsical slobber,
I find a bright angelic star. Under
Its radiance, ghouls have disappeared
From a hemlock-rich scowl

That loomed from the corner
In which the flower was perched, now
An empty mask-faced stand,
A cobweb, the only loud voice behind.

(ii)

All else, the sculpted grimace
Of a wall, the chilly confrontation
Of walk and whirl and pounce,
A cemetery fence in a living-room.

A labyrinth of specks and motes
And poor atoms bark, their voices
No louder than the muted scream
Of silent intimidated toys shrunk

By sheer anxiety into a hollow book,
A starved novel too new to have
Been within the reach of voracious readers,
Who begin to admonish it rather late.


(iii)

The cracked lips of gladioli scratch
Gazes, staining with an unwanted kiss
Daffodils in bleeding yawns, as I'm
Compelled to blow their trumpets.

Too busy arranging other flowers
That only haunt me with strange gazes,
I hasten up to groom the colors
And butterfly-flapped wings about

To fly a party to the southern porch
Where hot hamburgers have been
Waiting and waiting, until a gale
Has swept away most of a colorful meal
Into the invisible bowels of a whale.