Early Morning Breakfast Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

I roll over in bed, a gray
tray on a slate patch of cloud

stretched in to sit
in an expanding crevice
on the drifting window.

Dawn's graphite
has melted into pewter,
black birds of clouds

still hanging over
a strip of bird-winged
ashy horizon shrinking
into flint stripes.

Jump on, dotted sprinkled
charcoal breaking
into pieces of a burning glow.

Fading out, as morning
breezes in with moonstone,

pearl gemstones and beams
of gold laid across under
the lake to give air
a swelling creeping glow.

(ii)

From a still fog, a yellow
bird slowly flaps
its wings, sticking out a sharp
beak of light to peck

at shredded lead bouncing
over the lake, a frying pan,

under which the sun's hand
beaming from the lake's bottom
stirs a grease to rise

with mist and fog back
to a silver ceiling spreading soot
again to stitch itself
to a shredded mass of charcoal.

(iii)

The window's opening
gradually widens
into a flying ivory space grabbing
the sun's arm, as it spreads out

shivering fingers of rays
to heat the morning's frying pan
spinning in the lake

with a bonfire
melting dawn's grease
into a morning's full breakfast,

as an egg yolk beams
through with a cream tray
carrying an alabaster lump.

An early dish of drifting
pink and rosewood clouds

sprinkle ketchup on a yellow paste
gliding across the window,
as a gentle wind gallops through.