All Night Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A comet lost its wings
in the deep sinking hole
of a sky in flames

waving red flowers
from storms of crackling mouths.

All night, drums dug
deep into a sinking bowl
drifting off suns
of a shining heart

into the burning coals of pain,
as a young dove's drool

sent my soul's stone
to a dying trip amid pops
devouring the youth of the land

no more riding on bicycles
to find a fast track through stars
and a lonely moon
to grab feathered air's soft wings.

The stropped arrow
of a catapulted will
took over with bulging hands
spun by a sparrow hawk's wheels,

an eagle of shooting eyes
waiting to seize the baton
from a man dressed
in a red and scarlet sky.

(ii)

All night, the moon lost
its torch to its smooth land
wearing a sea's skin
with no wrinkles and dimples.

Wearing a sky's coat
with no creases
from dragged-out wrinkles

from craggy shores
hit by the storm of fighters
wearing stormy boots
drenched in downpours of red rain.

Burning glowing coals
flew across fields stretched out
like flat elastic bands

skinning earth of its grasses
and trees grown
taller than a sky's shoulders.

All night cocks crowed
out of muzzles,
the moon breaking into lime

shards of stars crawling
and flying across angles sharp

as the arrows that burn
my pain into the ashes
of youth, their fingers playing
guitar notes on triggers.

(iii)

All night cackles laughed
and grumbled and roared
from glow-swollen hearths

blown into the sky of a will's heart
wearing a spiky hat
flown by a hand's tornado,

as valleys were filled
with red clouds riding on a trip
to a world in a world,

showers of orchids floating down
with broken fingers
to settle on mahogany lakes
croaking with choked frogs.

At a lake's glossy edge,
where life rides itself
on flat steel-edged tires,

let us a spin a potter's wheel
from clay on its shredded shores.