Color Of A Wild Flower Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for the Ngarbuh-Ntumbaw children of Ambazonia) .

(i)

The bubblegum hearth, a baby's gaping mouth,
breaks the world into a sky spinning
a hat of light it wears under the huge wings of a cloud,
evening the dimming dark flower waving
blackbirds into a crater's nook and roost of night.

In the howl-and-growl hurricane, every path
meets each other in a maze of fluted whispers,
leaving each other in a tornado under
a kettle heating water for milk, the cow mooing
by a screeching bleating bouncing calf.

We're born into a lightning-wrapped world full of light,
rosy flowers from babies' flying flashy mouths,
when a splash of beige cream air hits them.
And they laugh to spray the world with sky, gum
the red patches of dusk, the bird of a flying evening.

And when babies whimper with a wind-pulled
babbling river sailing under green trees
to brown deltas and marsh, where they sink,
running into fern and jade domes of woods, tree top
leaves hanging from sky's bouquet spills silver air.

Crawling and cruising waters that join seas and oceans
flow from a baby's dripping drool,
pull with streams of love flowing with giggles
and cackles, the grackle bobbing its blue sea coat.
The baby's dark shadow spins a moon-lit night.

(ii)

I walked into the roar of the hour - a howling, buzzing
bumblebee night building lime and harlequin
light rising into sky-rises and gold towers of flames.

I walked into a hearth of cackles and whispers,
flags raising bleaching skies, stains of melted crows
hanging from crane-lowered ceilings.

I crawled by an umbrella acacia tree drifting
to take shelter with a ziziphus spray of emerald light
bouncing off walls, roofs shaven to hollow out
under night's swelling dark petals, volcanoes
talking to each other, as night wore bleeding red flowers.

I walked into the bowl of a slashed curling night,
I walked through a furrow of cream night
hollowed out into beige clouds of flying smoke
flashing and flushing out white ribbons.

Cream graffiti was sprayed over the pit of a roof,
a house dressed in desert and khaki walls.

Knock down a wall raising mustard flags.
fell down trees of light flipping out black birds
of cinder, embers burning hearts in a storm of light
showered down walls and aisles of gray clouds

O knock down the wall of smoke thinning out into a whimper,
a baby having been brought ashore,
another storm wave of yellow ribbons and flags
sailing to stroke croaking crows,
as a wild fire rises into a large-mouthed wild flower.