Island Of Shadows Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Island Of Shadows
(i)

How many suns
have I grown
and swallowed
with smoke
from the burnt bird of a schema,
when my inner bowl

spins with a leaking hole
sprinkling off stars

to litter sparks
from soot
and the crow tails
of burning tinder

still hard like stone
with no legs - no feet
on sprawling flowers

I've not yet
breathed in, like the stargazer
stroking me
every morning,

as I walk by
with muttering parrots
rolling their eyes

from a deep barrel
running into a mossy gulch
sipping no sun,
but caves of night.

(ii)

Sinking me deep
into an island of shadows

waving flying birds
that never land to peck off

ropes and knots
of ants building labyrinths
of paths to death,

these pyramids of houses
cutting off their cones
and cow-sized waists mooing
in a hooting wind.

(iii)

My gloom's shredded island
on a piece of night,
its shores shredded

into spiked cobblestones
that nibble off a horse's hoofs,
when life trudges

with a cozy room between
hippo tusks, as a house
of an animal wheezes
and growls with a chuff

into the candelabra-lit sky
of a melting dawn
tossed over hearths

roasting the only bonfires
that burnt shadows
they'd sprayed across ants

nibbling off silhouettes
of dead ants, when locusts
from fat clouds

hung down trees
thick sticking paint dripping
with claws and paws
of shadows fleeing horned shadows,

as broken folks
exchange notes with me
under dim drifting stars

fleeing into a blacksmith's workshop
as I fuse myself
from a crawling archipelago of lights
planted at many sea points
raising pillars of light to stroke the sky.