If I Were A Whale Poem by Felix Bongjoh

If I were a whale
If I were a whale
I would rather swim
Freely,
Unobtrusively.
Without a nephrotic coat,
As apoplectic
Winds fly against
The tide of my stifled sphere.

I would rather swim
Without chains,
As barnacles
Whimsically
Sip off every iota
Of my breath.

I would rather swim
Gently through
The lonely strait
Of me abandoned to me.
Through a tube
O through a muted hose slipped

Through thinness -
A confined tunnel
Funneling neither air, nor water,
Channeling nothing
Into an asphyxiated desperation
Without even the roof
Of a church rat's restricted corner:

Neither a dazed escapee,
Nor an exceedingly retracted refugee,
But an abandoned nerve.
Seeking its neuron
From misery's elusive oasis
In a sky
Where birds attempt to fly,
Their wings
Abandoned in distant nests.

I would swim,
Thoroughly slimmed down
Into a happy worm
Blind, nerveless, slipping
Unnoticed
Through the very barnacles

Tormenting me, hacking
All the bones
Of my intimidated spirit, ripping off
All its emaciated flesh -

And leaving
To its own enemy, me,
A badly mangled skeleton
In the noose
Of melancholy's hangman,

Whose mere gaze,
As small as an ant's eye,
Would send me back, intact,
Into my whole being
The size of a holy beast
Larger than a whale.