Hissing Silence Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

It's been quiet
in his sleepy house
all stretchy week,

no hairs caught
creeping
on shrinking walls.

No cobwebs
steered by eye
to move,

as they sit glued
to their roots
in still walls.

It's been no whisper,
no hiss,
no crackling bamboo
in his clay wall

still waiting to bleed
with roaches
and small bugs.

Even night stars
and slashes
of moon have stayed
off his narrow bed.

(ii)

Even thick lumps
of brittle clay

flying from his
torn walls
have stopped landing

on the silent
clouds of his mounting
bed linen,

growing only feathers
of shredded edges,

threads hanging down
with sealed mouths.

(iii)

O sealed air,
you spin
the silver crown
of silence,

low-muttering smoke
no longer
crawling out
of a dead-cold
fireplace
burying every hiding spark,

burrowing underground
beneath warm pieces
of embers that have shut
their red eyes.

Those red flies of sparks
quietly jumped
and poked their pupils

that burnt and itched
throughout the day
under mumbling, whispering

cauldrons planted
to spin muttering water
and hissing grease.

Threads of silence
tie him up
into a bundle of logy limbs,

as a mouse darts
through his floor,
throwing him

into a creepier world
with no stars
in a moony sky.