Children In The Valley Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The sun quite often
jumps over the mountain
to land in a valley
with splashed light.

Love in arrows of rays
shot at children
weaves silver threads
of streams in sweat

to flow gently down
their stretched faces.

Love also grows hibiscus
horn trumpeting flowers
that don't wither,
as they run around them.

The flowers only trumpet
more sun to croak
for mama and auntie
in their hidden cocoon
breaking under boots.

They're not yet returned,
since they were seized
by wooden men
growing with tree crowns.

Their peaked pyramidal
rising hats grew thorny,
narrowed into arrows
that poked a glass sky into shards.

(ii)

But love on faces
powdered and glazed
with oily cream rays
only brightens
screaming, sniveling faces.

Love hollowed out
with deep, deep dents
for lakes to drink
more water from lachrymal
torches switched on and off

to explode into rivers
from eyes of light:

Where's mama
and the baby twins?
Where's auntie
Often chained with love
To the two baby boys?

The round kids jumped
and rolled
all day with soccer balls
bouncing
between two walls
that collapsed,

when mama and untie
did not climb back home.

The children's eyes shine
floated balls of rays
to roll down cheeks
that stretch into marsh.

They screech and croak
with toads pulled by strings

of love that tether
them to mama.
Their tears spill and spin
steel chains

to bury them in dungeons
under stamped
tramping boots gathering ants.

Nibbling off, pinching out
their flesh. Pulling out
their numb nerves
grown into creeping worms.

(iii)

The children are perched
on a jumping fig tree
feeding them only
with red glowing figs

dripping down
to burn their throats
with red coals
of smoldering love
not feeding them
with close petals of their breath.

Cascades of flowing beads
garland them
with flowery trophies
of mama and auntie,

as they scream out to sunrays
swinging them
to the ringing bells
of their trumpet flowers.

Night in winged daylight
Is dumped by hope to light up
the children's legs,
as they skip
with grasshopper legs.

They croak too
rattling more softly than
jerky frogs,
when fire sings
with voices of rising pops.