Fire And Sky Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Now that the sun
is burning in the fire
before me

woven by tinder
and embroidered,
red, by rolling
belching sneezing coals,

I sit with heat-
shooting gods
by a deep hearth,
as ash is spun
from gray clouds.

I sit with the sky
buried in growing dumps
of ash popping

and coughing out smoke
to from a cigarette-
and pipe-smoking fire.

(ii)

Cackling out life
in a cold morning,
as I push into the hearth

dry wet green leaves
and soft pithy stems
coated in hay,
leaving the horses
to bray and die, standing,

as life buried
in a hearth's volcano
starts with sky's blaze.

(ii)

Now that a yellow
and dandelion sun burns
in the hearth
before my dry baked eyes,

as bean buds die on ridges
in fields carrying
farmers on neighing horses,
all screaming out
for more mulching rays,

I sit by a hearth
fueling logs with horse food
for my warmth,
as I pull down skies to sit
by snorting sniveling coals.

The reddish crimson
cloud and ray of sun
also burns deep
down into a rattling hearth,

twigs only curling,
as rattlers crawl in far-flung
rocky sandy floors.
(iv)

The fire is full of hissing
snakes gripping
chirping crickets and cicadas
playing cymbals,

as a firestorm of evening sky
settles and roars
beneath a cauldron of life.

Splashing out
oil-coated stars
of skipping grasshoppers

turning on
dotted lime lights
to fly in syzygy

inside and above
the nebula
hanging in a midnight
hollow falling lower
and lower over me

to sit down closer
to me by a hearth
spitting out stars
of sparks from moth cinders.

Covering me
with a sky always squealing,
as I churn
in a deep hearth
coals of past red eyes
that blazed and blew out a fight.