Missteps And Oversteps Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The mall is a ropy
cloud of folks in slithering rows
and columns of woven

and embroidered patches
of arms in beaming sleeves
stitched to each other
in labyrinths of hide-and-seek,

everybody clinging
to a toddler,
who's slipping off his way.

As loops of hands tighten
other strayed and bubbling faces
overflowing their banks
with jerky giggles and cackles.

(ii)

How many times
do I meet with myself
outside myself, this dude
into whom I bump,

as he bawls out to me.
I bow to my misstep
and he yells
out for me in the sun

at my overstep under
a thick unfolding blanket
of silence built up
into a blind wall of me.

Into which others bump,
when they've lost
their eyes to far-flung bowers
behind mountains.

How many shadows
of beaming me
have sent me crashing
through glass screens,

as I dive, head first,
into a mirror in a public square,
winds of coxcombs
and dandies floating in flames

of giggles and explosive
cackles, as I rise back

from a deep jagged
pit of pains and crawling
red roaches of bruises
stroking my burning wounds.

(iii)

Time burns itself out
too, when a lady-killer slips off
a wet mall floor,

as a sunshine man
carrying thick night

in his quiet inner drums
and barrels
bursts into a popping cackles,

other passers-by wet
with streams from eyes
swimming in lakes of dry glee.

(iv)

Many hollowed-out faces
stream the streets
of a mall to sip nectar
from strings of missteps.

And a spotted overstep,
when a sky-sprayed fop hurls off
a star-twinkling gentleman
for slipping into his tight path

in a space, where all
weave themselves out of anthills
of shoppers collapsing
into each other on a day,

when arrows from quills
of my winged self
pierce through me,
although little is left of me.

A I stand, a spark, bounced off
a fire of smiling faces
breathing in missteps and oversteps.