Fly Higher Than A Stork Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Spiral your
shears
through hedges
of wallowing

clouds of leaves
rising
from the tornado
of your sneeze.

Dig into a deeper
valley between
the nimbus arms
of old broken

furniture with light
from a deep
a termite's hole
into earth's mantle
in the bookshelf.

As you pull
yourself
in your living room
out of you

in a wing of air
of you,
plant yourself
down
into the deep
ridge of your sofa.

Brew a storm
from
a candle bowl,
its flame
the bicycling

bird to fly
higher than
a paper kite amid
balloons
from a hollow air.

Flying
with you, as you totter
in your
wallowing pool

of feathered
bleating air, a lamb
to jump over
a sleeping dove.

Sit down
and flatten yourself
out in daisy
streams of air

far-flung in the wilds
of your study
flipping through
every book,

your condor wings
lightening
your hands,

as they drift
and tumble into
the volcanos
of the glass of water

you sip
with a nightingale's
singing whisper.

(ii)

In the windy
breeze
cutting through

the window
of a drummed thought,
dig a tunnel

under your legs
flung over
the center table

to board the aircraft
to flap
its wings in Eris

under the arrowed
curves
of your brow.

(iii)


When in a hurricane,
flip it over
into your breath,

as you breathe
out a tsunami
to knock you out
from within,

as you grab your
knight's sword,
while you slip off
a tower, holding tight

your winged
rapier without
dropping dropping

your feather-light
rapier
harboring a scimitar's
sharp-beaked sabre,
your living bird..

Roll out no airstrip
in condor wings.
Stretch no airport
route without
a stopover of you,

the only runway
of your living room
to fly higher
than a swelling stork,

a griffon vulture
lagging behind
walls of forests

and mountains
to be climbed,
as you flatten out
yourself
under your brow's
living room.

Blow into
the contrabassoon
of your breath
with a zephyr

from your wink
at the sun,

its smooth egg
yoke peep
a hatching world's
lockstitch.