Changing Castle At Day's End Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Night falls, a stiff trunk
slowly growing,
with the tan shaft
of a dark tussock umbrella

rising from the tallest
jumping skyscraper
in town screaming
into a carob canopy
of a thickly dyed dusk.

Waving, spraying
in a low-voiced wind
a grassy sky of fireflies
crawling
into fully-fledged wings
of shifting flying stars.

How earth has been
flipped over to hang
with a swelling firmament
over a full castle

stretching is arms to pull
over a darker blanket
of running, cruising night.

(ii)

Covering a cold earth,
a quiet flowing labyrinth
of lime light shot
from cars diving and veering

into hollow spaces
of fleeing time choked
on a floor we tramp on,
squeezing life out
of a sundial no longer

drifting to roll the world
on wheels screeching
to a halt with flutes
from the throats of skipping
cartwheeling crickets

in our new growing castle
of sprinting g night
on broken crumbling legs,
the firm beams and girder
of its body still holding.

In a café folks bite off
night from the yellow juices
of a hamburger
chewed quietly by lips

that rolled all shimmering day
in the motor of chats
laden with wounded bleeding
politics unclothed
into the trunk of a skeleton.

Skeletal men sip fire
from the sinking tails
of sienna, camel buns melting
into mouths
with no more space
for the roller coaster
of birds flapping dead wings.