Flame On Flame Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The sky had jumped down
here, the outer blue
of a carburizing flame settled

on the glass tray of his temper
splitting into shards.

Kijem kicked air and hair
in the air, chased a starling ‘s feathers
of blue flames from a fire smoldering

with the red-blue coals
of his creeping hearth, everyone
igniting the wax of his temper.

He galloped within himself
and jumped high out
of his volcano this morning,
igniting Chongwain
still peeling and blowing off

blisters from a feud with a neighbor
choked by the smoke
from a wildfire, a crowd grumbling
loudly about his dog.

The animal barked all night, tethering
everyone's sleep
to its slippery temper.

(ii)

A flame on flame ignites
a rumbling fire by a river, whose babbling
waters hatch yellow butterflies
sitting on the lips of a sunflower.

Below dawn's flamy sky
sits the fire of a laugh and afterlaugh
of a cackling mid-air,

a thunderclap having flipped out
its hands and legs and pulled out
flying hairs of sparks,

everybody grew a flame
from the sparkling teeth of laughs
that could set a sky on dawn's flames.

(iii)

A flame on flame doesn't always
explode to burst
into clouds of smoke

filling the air over flamy tongues
flowing in a quaking river
that won't devour those yellow butterflies
of a floating creeping flames.

Flame on flame, butterfly on butterfly,
sink beneath the fire of a canary
flapping wings of smoke

wheeled by a bird pulling the yellow chassis
of a train piercing through a bush of sunflowers.