Continuum Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Do I begin with the star
that cracks open
a moon face in a sky's
dark corner, or the round

ball perforating my wall
with a cream circle
as shelves are torn
with light stretching out
to the garden,

a fire ginger burning air
with a red flame
from coals churning froth
and spume rising
to stroke my inner bowl

glimmering with a stammering
candle? The burning lips
of air crank up and drive

the engine of love, stars
swallowing every corner's angle.

(ii)

Does love shower down
a stiff dry pole to dress
body with singing leaves, the garland
that waves of match stick

flames that shudder in a light wind
and seal their lips
as half-flames grow flowers
in a hurricane mounting tall ridges?

Do cotton specks flip over
to dapple and towel off
drizzles sticking with biting

midgets and thorns
stuck out from shifting hollows

on a beach? Or they steam,
clicking and stroking
muttering plates, sifting dust

from flowers, bees buzzing
to for the moment,
when life's barrel is full of nectar?

(iii)

What tropes pour out
from bees' quiet mutter
steering night's silence, a river

flowing across the chest
to the sun still setting beyond
midnight, as dawn licks
corners of a new sun that clicks?

What rusty rustles
from a wave's smoking pipe
steers you down the horizon
where you began,

your hand scissoring another hand
with a firm grip?

Beneath our brows
cutting through swinging curtains
bounces dawn's flowery sun

already withered
by a stilted staggered breeze
licking a forehead

for a new beginning when
we're already late
for the beach perched on a tumbling cliff.

Wave-steered to a softer
shore, night cracks open

a stretch to a gold horizon neither
dusk nor dawn, as birds sing
in our drifting heads for a start-off point.