Earth's Crawling Stars Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Bang. And stars
settled
on crawling lawns

with stringed
beads of ants
and grasshoppers

on legs
of catapulted springs,
as they did
the seesaw

and sent midgets
to find shelter
in bushes
in the armpits

of flayed men
bringing back flesh
to life and sky.

Bugs too
met death
with the snapping
palms

of boys, ears glued
to pops
from corncobs

basking
for a roast
from a fire's glow.

Bang. And sky
flipped over
to lie on rivers
and lakes of lawns,

every carpet
silver and lace
embroidered
and knitted
to grow into marble.

(ii)

Boom. And volcanoes
flipped out
specks of magma
that won't freeze,

turning
into blacksmiths'
sparks
in the dark room
of the world.

Boom. And stone-lined
creeping hearths
exploded
into fireflies
of crawling stars,

laid-out mats
pulling out feet
on every stride.

(iii)

Like the creeping,
crawling stars,
chirping crickets
jumped in,

but found home
elsewhere
in us, around us
and on us.

They jumped
up and down

in the round
mushroomed
bowls of our heads,

bleaching out
night into
a Scandinavian
midnight's daylight.

And our world
died like glued ice
in a cooler,

our only tent
flipped open
with space
only for a star,

when death flattened
out earth
into the slippery
slab of tombstone

spiraling
with stars on earth
on life's axis.