Crowded Solitude Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Bring down the elastic sky
to sit by your hearth
with all its tailed flying sparks.

Fly into air and pull down
the feathery butterscotch sun.

Let a blonde lance of ray
cut through; brush off his pimples.
Pin the bleeding kiss
of a wasp on his stony face.

Swim in wind-pushed air.
Fly over taupe rock, arms
flung over to wrap up
jumping crops of carob
and leaning jade-black rock.

His eyes cruise and race
over distances that don't stop.
They shoot rockets
to sail through trees, landing
on branches with no fruit.

(ii)

In a buzz- and folks-free
hollowed-out home,
Akoni sits and spits out
gobs of bitter spittle
and sputum to roll off

with dust to hidden pores
and holes of an earth
with no floor for his spine.

His bed spins no soft lawn
drifting a stroking mattress
of shamrock moss grasses.

Behind the Anjin mountain
he cuts off his world
from indigo and red flowers.

Spraying petals to bees
with no mouths to blow
into trumpets of wind.

(iii)

He cuts off his core of fire
from a tide of faces flowing
outward to splash
sun to other's lives, his only
light and stars
flying over a baobab stone.

On the stone he sits
throughout the day
swallowing with cave eyes
strings of plodding women.

Going and returning
from cornfields, maize stalks
standing by their ribs
with large corn cobs
like back-brushing babies.

(Iv)

Throughout a day floated
in sun, he sits and stretches
out, riding a bullock-
horned rock riding him
to a compound in the valley.

Feeding him with ovals,
triangles and splitting circles
of children frolicking
towards sun splashes on a stone
at the center of huts.

How the stone flames
with the stormy fires of love,
as they wrestle and punch
each other without brewing
the hot coals of a full-fist,
sword-hurling roaring fight.

At night, he opens the closed
doors of his chest
to a million falling stars
drowning him in a neon-lime lake
with seams of moon-lit silver.

And he only counts flashes
from the birdy stars
in his overcrowded sleep
pulling in messages from memories.