Between Two Narrow Strips Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Between peaks
and troughs
of two storm waves,

let no elephant
sludge and slough
of silt or hawk of air
above a wave
devour you.

On the shore,
hurled off
by a wave's tail

to land you
amid tall brown
reeds and blades
of lanky grass,

you roll over
to an unclothed
stretch of earth
woven and stitched
together
by crawling ants.

(ii)

Behind the grassy
screen
of latticed stalks
and rising skeletal
jumping shrubs,

a roaring lion
carries sun,
and stars
in its glowing eyes

spiraling and spitting out
red ripples ofdeath,
a fire rising
in a flare of growls,

when chilly spears
of fear
are hurled at you,
your rocky skin of ice
pushing you

to a smoother mat
of embroidered
and woven ants
shooting out hairs,

a sun-polished fabric,
a rolling floor
of creeping grass
full of needles
of bubbling ants

standing out
like pointed licking,
rolling tongues.

(iii)

Between two strips,
one a lion
carrying a boulder
of rays in its eyes,
the other an ant

carrying night
as it pulls you into
its deep home,

a cave with no bright
lantern and only
a flint evening sky
flipping out
no oil lamp,

you're caught
between
two narrow routes -

light over the flamy
tongue of a lion

or night breathed out
by an ant's dark body
in a deep home
with no light.

Of course, you'd
get pulled in
by a fleeing ant rolling
on floating legs

to space between
the ebony walls
of a deep hole.

(iv)

Asked to cut out
a deal
between
a route of bright light
over fire-laden eyes
of a beast,

andlife
deep beneath
an ant's dungeon,

I'd bawl out
with a thunder's trumpet:

I'm pulled in
by life
in a deep dungeon
of night in an ant hole,

as I kick out life
up in sky's home
shot out

by the brightening
arrows of flames
from a lion's eyes.