Heavenly Bodies Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Rocky mountain
brushing me,
razing off
my afterfeathers,

as I dash
out of a roaring
volcano
of rising flames.

Burning me,
bulldozing me off
my whispering

warbling bed,
all birds ashes
pressed
into a papery sheet.

Crushed flat
by little sleep
into a rolled-out
carpet

for ceiling and sky
to tramp
and bounce on,

I carried
an untrimmed night,
fauna and flora
in the jungle

of an expanding nebula,
animals pouncing
on my plastic-thin skin,

crawling all over
my body with sharp
scratching claws
and paws gripping me,

mauling me
into saggy earth
and muddy clay

to sink roots
deep into my spine
and chew it

into a soft bamboo
pith burning
into soft fluffy ashes.

(ii)

I carried one too
many moons last night

flapping wings
through the window
to sit on my navel

sinking cream pins
of light
to bite off

and chew my bones
already ground
to dust and ashes by pain.

Last night I carried
too many
heavenly bodies above
my sky-lifting roof

to be able to fly with
cotton balls
this heavy morning,

my glowing fingers
still burning
with scorching buzzing flames,
as bees sting me.

(iii)

I carried one too
many moons and stars
lighting me up

into a flowered rolling
stalk growing thorns

that nibbled off
my sheets and blanket,

as I rolled like a log
down the steep slope
of a footslogging dawn
and limping morning.

My hands are stiff now
with the tussle
I had with a pricking sleep.

(iv)

Pick up a blue
golf-sized ball
for stretchy dozens
of squeezes

and your hands
can grab fire,
says a therapist,

as he points to a basket
of smooth-skinned

balls tugged
back to back
into tight space.

Here we go again,
I bawl out
at the therapist:

One of these
blue balls breathes out
Uranus, when I squeeze it,

as it swells back
with the full body
of a planet,

whose icy skin I'm yet
to stroke, as it sinks me
into a thin-skinned sea

of air drowning me
into floating skies of helium,

as it weighs trillions of tons -
too heavy
for arthritic hands.

Squeeze out
my buzzing bees,
O squeeze out
my humming pain.

But to flex my hands
out of pain,
I must carry and toy
with one more
heavenly body,

this icy ball of Uranus.
too hot and heavy
for my brittle clicking hands.