Purity Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Silver transparency
spins sun
wings buried
in a countryside spring,

a steady mirror
drowning you
into
its bottom
of silt and white clay

smoothed
into marbled cement

to sketch and spray
you with stony
edges of a silhouette.

O man x-rayed
and etched out
into a scream statue
from an ice block,

the crystal bust
of breath and hue.

Let a storm of sculptors
capture you
into pure you under
a sky's glass

brewing fire and gyre
of resemblance,
leaf over leaf,
petal over petal,

no speck,
no stain, no spark
that flies
with a star and bird
different from you.

(ii)

But purity
from a volcano
of you
only explodes
with your inner self,

when God's magnifying
glass takes
a flash of a snap shot,

and you're you
breathing out you,
a breeze
of stainless dew

you breathe, when times
spin on cream
and blue wheels

spinning
a hummingbird
drawing nectar
with no tang,

no perfume,
and no air
of the mantis
that strikes

with heavy axes of limbs,
as life spins
from bank to bank,

lawns harboring only air
and no mantis
with a centaur's gallop,

as mist clears
into
crystal glass

that must be glazed
and polished
with God's hands.

(iii)

The knot of a mind's
mine shaft
only truth can explore
with no pick-axe

and no prong
to filter
dust of earth
from stone-ground gems.

I'll build
a bouquet with
baby breath
and white daisy

held down
a vase's neck
by specks of gardenia
and white rose,

when I look
into my baby's eyes
and see sun
sitting on stars.