Desert Stretch Of Silence Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Filled with moony balls
of hamburgers squeezed
into quiet swollen buns
goldenrod like ballooned hot cakes
full of red crimson jam,

my hollow head a rumbling barrel
full of mist and slates of ice,

I plump, an elephant
full of air, into my bed, this stretch
on a pier running into a wave.

A running river crooning
with cut-off quiet sighs
from trudging boots falling
from sparks of Victoria Falls,
a tumbled rainbow stretched out

on a green sheet drifting
me to the arms of a mountain
that collapses, as I climb
to its flattened-out quiet peak.

And never rises back
to the ochre pitch
of my snail-dragged bed
riding a horse on a rising flowing bed.

(ii)

How many sandy taupe
miles of silence shall I cover
on my jagged muted bed,
no bouncing bump
from a mosquito's song?

How many million
flattened-out miles, a stretch
of creeping ants
of gravel and mist, a mat
of desert laid out on my bed?

How many weaves of Antarctica
stitched to the Sahara,
my only companion, a star

in an umber hole
creeping out of a pewter patch
hurled off by a silver cloud?

How many miles
of the Arabian stretching desert
a rolled-out blanket
of sand carrying tramping

feet trailed by the tan denim
carpet of a Kalahari
cruised over
by an unbeatable albatross?

My bed is all desert
From pole to pole, as the sky
drops on my pillow
with a drawn-out moon.

(iii)

My bed is all moon
behind a nebula of my pillows
shifting me to another
silent road without bumps.

No potholes to shoot me
to a roof in a flowing car
of sleep drifting me to a smooth
highway, no screeches,

no sobs from tires kissing tarmac,
as I hug my pillow

in a deep snore rising with
a lip-sealing thunder
that plunges me back to sleep

on a silent stretch of desert
in my Boston room,
dawn dragging me over

to the muted running whistles
of a quiet desert stretch
breathed out by a tottering snore.