Heightened Faith Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

There's only me
in a deep bunker
on an island
drifting off the shore

of my one-man
city in the cubicle
of my shadow,
with no bridge or road to it.

Chased off beyond
a cliff hanging
over the floor of a dark
canyon, walls crumbling
into themselves,

I stand in a tube.
I drift down a pipe
flushed to swoosh me
into a pit:

Where does a dark lump
of sludge find home,
if not with thick crusts
of thrash sunk
to a hanging dark
elevator, floating, floating?

O let me be a casebearer
sticking to the machine's wall.

Let me be a bagworm
glued to an alabaster panel
sinking with me
to my crimson-marbled
dungeon glowing with cold coals.

(ii)

Cornered into a hole,
I'm lost
on the swelling hill
I climb
in a tunnel still sinking

with me to a tight
cubicle. No shrike
to bawl into my ears
the life of its hike
to the harbor with no anchor.

But I've lost no eye
with a mouse
squeaking beneath my feet
on a spiked rock
that would have pierced me
had there been no mouse.

Let me cling
to the honeysuckle,
as I pick a hollyhock
to drift me

close to a heather
for a cushioning pad,
sticking glue

my only boulder
in the tower of a crane,
as I rise to the peak
of a storm wave:

Let a firm hoist rope
hold jib and boom
to a tightened knot of sheaves,

as a peaked wave rises
with he hook to lift me
onto a ship's deck
one ladder off a firmament.