An Old Man's Scars Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Lightning rips
tall floating leaves
into beams
to dance
with an old man's shadows.

How trumpets of night
from vine flowers
blast out with an eruption
of memory
stifling moons.

In the widening range
of a nebula
running
into a deep night-blanketed
volcano,

thorns brew a tornado
to toss him up
into a night's hearth.

Sprayed strolling stars
swing in
from a bush
of periwinkles.

Ribbons
of flowers
button up
but stay shredded,

a large rag,
swelling
into a pitch cloud.

(ii)

Night sky waves stars
from the jungle
of wound-softening
flowers,
stroke scars,

but attract no bees
only humming
for nectars
old man sips in teas.

And they hold no spars,
as he sails in his ship
of being
over storm waves

that stitch only
large bleeding wounds
of a dusk sky.

(iii)

But leave
dawn's scratches
reddening
the broken sky of night

with red rivers
to flow
down thick cheeks

swollen with memory,
streams
that roll on quietly
down other faces,

cascading into the marsh
of wailing widows, .
widowers lost
in bushes of periwinkles.

Again, stars
twinkle, but mend
no rags,

no flying threads
still creeping
like strayed spiders.

Stitching no new outfit
for the old man's stormier
day, when midnight
hangs on,

and dawn is choked
by a horizon's mist
and fog,
no sun over the mountains.