Sinking With A Diving Pigeon Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Sinking With A Diving Pigeon
(i)

Arisen from a deep
hole sinking
me through floating sleep

into a hanging gorge,
I peek at life
in the red face
of a drifting cloud.

I peek at life
through the narrow pipe
of a prison cell

gripping me
with the feathery hands
of a diving pigeon.

Bird of a man
smoother than
a sun-bathed lake
carrying a hill

on its head
of clawed thorns
and rusty nails
from Mount Calvary,
in feathers of air,

wiggles of ants
have stung me with a dose
of a stringed
swinging flagellation,

as I reach out
for a pigeon
spraying itself into mist
and haze of itself.

(ii)

On your nape,
I glide down
to your hackle,
where life takes off
again in a pigeon's retrices,

the beginning
cleaving the end
with a razor-lipped flame.

I peek at life
with a pigeon's dive
through a sinking pipe
of lightning,

an arrow flipped out,
a moon ray,
from a lime star

taking me down
to a ripple
in spreading lake,

its wings froth and foam
with feathers
of pigeon I cannot grab,
as it slips off,

falling back into a hole
in air's feathers,
life digging
into a comet's hole

flying out with a rainbow
from the feet
of Victoria Falls
in a volcano's yawn.

(iii)

A flight on a curve,
a pigeon's elastic nape,
flips me out
of the flower vase
by my drifting couch

into a valley of bees
stinging me
and a sunflower's flames,

as the pigeon
gobbles down
the bees
and pushes the world

to feathery stings
to gaggle life
with drumming thunderous
hands in the throat.

How life ends
with a bang
in one's heaved breath
dropping off a cliff
with a croaking pigeon.

Let me float
on me at a pigeon's tail
spat out
by a quivering volcano,

my flames rising back
with gold flowers
from my drifting vase.