Cut Off From Rubbing Strokes Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Why fold myself
into a stone
and plant it
in an unmulched couch?

A round stone
wriggling, soft, like a worm
peeking
at a wall's rocky pitch

with no scribbles
left and discarded
by men hugging each other
in a scramble
in no cauldron - no eggs.

But a hot spray
of interwoven emptiness
with no players
fumbled into a soft knot
of strokes and brushes.

And the pricking
digging touch
that rakes and filters out

a drifting desert
unfolding a wasteland,
an ash-hued paper
unburnt by a coal's glow.

(ii)

Unwoven, unstitched,
unknitted
with the crowded script
of a bird's muted
zigzagged trot traces
on a straight path.

Slithering
into an under-earth
burying
unseen pores.


Leaving only a trace
of black ants
unembroidered
and unstitched
with the thick threads
of chained clinching fingers.

(iii)

And woolen legs
riding mini-bicycles,
as they print
wheel stamps
birds read, and beak-write
fondles with pecks

at the dents
of heels and big toes
of far-flung tourists

plodding, tramping
heavily on ants
to post messages
to other ants
carving out earth for food.

Creeping through soft knots
with the look
of two squirming hands
tightening a grip,

the only hieroglyphics
man hasn't learnt to read
on a beach
in the sofa, as man sits
planted deep into man.

Folded up
Into the stony pangolin

planted like an armadillo
into dot, it's question mark
digging deep
into itself, but unclothed

like a still worm
breathing out no wiggles
as it's folded up
for a smashed death,
its only buried berth.

Bulldozed into myself,
cut off
from rubbing strokes
in a thick-cushioned,
bird-feathered
crawling settee,

why not cruise
into the snail shell
that breaks
singing and sobbing
like a splitting egg's song
with no chick?