Man In A Crater Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In a maze
of flamy tongues
stuck out,

as spiky hands
grip him
with tightened pliers
of finger nails

thrusting off
horns of questions
he cannot blow

with sharp flying
gales of whips.

As he chokes
croaks
from a dry
cracking throat

and chops up
his snivels
into pieces of rock

burning
with glow
and flames

from eyes hurling
out arrows
with flying gazes.
.
(ii)

More bumps
creep on his body
and rise

to hills of swellings
sloping
with saw-edged
scratches
and squiggles.

And sculped-out
discs of scars
clothed in frog skin

settle and lie
on him,
the crocodile
to swallow him soon.

More whips
from cloudy hands
fall on him

with the stormy
muscles
of heavy cactus,

its saw edges
cutting through
with a razor's run.

As sun
on his temple
and gorge
of deep cheeks

flees to the edge
of a cave
in a deep cliff.

(iii)

Thorns of slight
and wasp-lipped
scolds
land and dig

with eagle beaks
and nail-headed
crawling claws

into conscience's
flesh woven
into stones

and sandy pebbles
of parading blisters
riding through skin

to brittle, clicking
bones swelling
beneath thickened flesh,

but the man
swells into a thick
feathered hawk

and takes off
in a flash of lightning
into the creeks
of a starred firmament.