Blanket Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In the bright flame
of a wide-armed night
building cottages
too small to shelter
a large wheeled head

Where's the pyramid's door?
Where the square box's
corridor melting
into a thin river hanging down
a puffy grumpy cheek?

Shift your shifting ribs
on a drifting bed
mooing with the milked cow,
its hat bleeding horns.

(ii)

How many times
have ellipses
and thorn-edged
broken charcoals

from a fire of love
been burnt, brittle,
ground soft
and sprayed over
and over to roll

and lay out a sheet
woven by threads
from flashed melted
creeping lightnings
oozing out
from carob ceilings of night?

Breathing out pops
and cackles
carrying spidery sparks
from a deep hearth?

Coughing out
night's jerky puffs
of cinders
that thicken
a bumpy ebony bed.

Rocking baby sky
on the lap
of mother earth
with ape arms of wind.

(iii)

On a windy night
a ringing gale
spreads and sprays out
its dark blue sheet

woven by a smolder
from a comet's glow.

Only spidery sparks
jump up
from love's deep gorge
holding a pick axe

to dig deeper
into love's drifting shaft.

At spreading night,
a piece of obsidian weave
unfolds itself, hangs flat.

Folds itself back
Into a thickened blanket
over earth's dome
swinging,

a dented sleeping man
rumbling
with a volcano's mouth,

slobber flowing out
like juice
from a filled hamburger bun
held by the quivering hand,

a boy's palms
spinning sturdy sisal ropes
from fingers
hanging on to wrist creases.

Bulldozing a plastic barrel
of broken bones
and unchewed tendons
into a metal mouth,

an elephant of a trash can
ambling on planted feet
on a sinking yard of late night.

(iv)

I have no warm blanket
to cover my bones,
as I roll over my bed.

Covering myself
with a piece of memory
built out
of crawling stars.

Hang on, splashes
of spittle
from night's candle breath.

Steered and veered
by a weak wick of flesh
breathing out
a fly-thin flame
from a blanket of night,

silver stars
flowing down to melt
on my cheeks
slashed by tributaries
from a rumbling river of memory.

Bursting into a deluge
of sunlight in a buzzing night,
the rainbow blanket
of a dark flashing night.

O silver threads of rain
poured down
to bathe and rinse me
with streams on my brow,

the only beads
on a rainbow blanket of night.