Cigarette Cloud's Tall Stub Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The dude stands
tall with a swan's neck
tumbling down
its sunken body
into an elephantine foot,

a bump of wet clay
flattened into sprayed
grains of charcoal

and shredded into
cloudy cricket legs

chirping, clicking
in night's nimbus
on a flame-eaten floor
rolled out

into feathers of toes
pulling wheel-rolled
lumps of ash
in smoky phalanges

dumped into
a swirling cloud
on breathing embers.

(ii)

Black sits the stub's foot,
dusty feathers

swelling milli-inch
by milli-inch
into a flowery smolder

wind-fanned
into dying fat ashes
wearing a thick pullover.

While the smoker,
an old chef just back
from a walk-in cooler

spins in his thin
nylon inner wear
of iciness writhing

into the frozen air
of his leafy,
soaked-feather self.

He wriggles and sinks
into his music
of teeth-gnashing

in his cold crusts
of numb tightening skin.

Gnash, gnash, gnash
gash, gash, gash,
as the tall cigarette stub

breaks
into riddled gashes
flung off in ashes.

(iii)

Cream stub's stem
grows a longer, curved
heron neck,

and in the breeze
spreads wings of an ostrich,

its heavy backside
crushing his pelvis

into a ball of bunny
purring and clucking
into the full
round mammal of a rabbit.

Devouring the thickened
cloud of a dude's fire
of broken gloom,

as life settles back
to a stroking animal's cluck.