Pillars Of Light Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

What steel pillars shall
raise me, stand me
and flip me over
to the sky's forehead,

or fall back with me
into a bouncing sofa,

where I roast and grind
rock patches
of large-fingered tentacles of me
scratching and gripping me

with beetle claws, as the bee
waits to take over

with a mouth-blowing-flame buzz
and the shrill clarinet
growing flowers in my ears.

Hearing no birds and beetles
interweaving themselves
with darted and twisted flights,

as the sun loses
feathers to the light-floating
cotton of wrapped lumps
and flying patches
of silver whetted lances of rays.

(ii)

I stay by a river
pulled downstream
by the canoe
of my arrow-shooting gaze

bouncing off a stone wall
and stitched pillars
woven into a stiff rock of night

What iroko trees
shall I climb in a raised-neck hall,
all eyes turned on me

like the headlamps
of a highway cruising car
piercing through flat

creeping shadows,
their creeping silhouettes
swallowed by streetlights
in an overcrowded meeting room.

(iii)

The sun shines
right through my flesh
to the star
that melts my scar

and breaks my shell of dark glass -
a glossy bush-filled night -
into splinters
that light up dim candle-lit
corners of loam ridges.

Rising with trees
from cobwebs riding me
like a broken bicycle

on a road of bumps
and crater-mouthed holes
carrying leopard-clawed
cobblestones and pebbles

devouring boots
and scarred stony soles,
when a moonlit night
blinks into an eclipse of dark denim,

as unfolding wool bleats
with docked sheep carrying
ice stones
in their melting spines
carrying a hot question mark
exploding into a smoky flame.