Cornfield In The Room Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

As moon finished shutting its eyes
over the house, whistling birds
raised their voices, a nightingale
holding the torch of the race to daylight.

A songbird blew light's tone as well,
a warbler cruising faster
to the flashy jack saw of bunched rays
cutting off a rod of teal,
knocking down the last wall of a mist.

And the far-flung canary flashy
in its sky-perforating voice
split open a patch of sky hugged by a cloud,
streams of light babbling over

the sleeping boy. The boy's snore
crooned through in morning's wavy sleep
to his father already
on daylight's ridged shore breaking

into a field of sapphire dressing up
everyone in the household
in an outfit and gear for a tool
to hammer through hills to be climbed
in its elastic memento

stretching a s far out as a pond in the woods,
where early fishing could fill
the deep freezer rattling with its cuboid
hollow like a motorcycles' engine.

(ii)

But the boy squealed and yelped
he'd rather go to the cornfield
to weed off the dreadlocks and beards
on ridges, playing with the birds as well.

His old man ogled at him,
brushing him with a gaze from head to toe,
thundering as thick clouds of rags
and sheets of paper hung over his bed.

He pointed to there's open country of grasses
and unshaved stalks of hangers,
from which the boy must weed out stained
and ruffled clothes for laundry.

He told the young man clouds
hanging above his bed must be raked off,
as he pointed to creeping cobwebs

and galloping gleaming case-bearers and bag-worms
that almost roasted the boy
with their flamy and flickering gazes.

(iii)
The old man also pointed at clouds
of old clothes unworn
for centuries hanging down a rack
placed on a wooden ward robe.

He shrieked and groaned at the overgrown trees
of wooden and metallic poles,
from which octopuses of torn clothes
spread yard-deep tentacles, broken-out threads
flying like the tails of reptiles.

Then he squealed at his young man
in a cutting tone that after weeding off
all the grasses of rags, he must go out
for a hunting trip within the walls
of his room, where roaches had grown into birds.

Besides, as the young man loved cornfields,
he could play with the birds
flying from the hanging wall pictures in your room.

But he must first scoop out
all trash from mole holes between boxes
and suitcases, from which a mole was likely to jump out.