Staircase To The Sky Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

An eye of sun has landed
on a wall in my room, where a corn ear
of light bounced off
to a hiding hole under my shifting bed.

A grain of light from a spinning
corn cob wears my mother's earring
splashing silver and gold
from the necklace she last wore,

as her last breath plunged us
in a storm from Mercury, Venus standing
on a mountain to pump in its

eyes and nostrils swelling in swirling
wailing fireflies of love.

(ii)

A wind swells into a tree
wearing spiders breathed out
by cobwebs of love,

breaking gossamer fingers hooked
into every pore of corn
harvested from my mother's rolling cornfield
and the earring field that stood on hinges,

her bobbing tongue waving a flag
of love to the edges of her lips muttering
a mile-long inch-short song:

"Always climb through
the ladder of tongue and lip spilling out
flames from a flower
above the petiole,
your navel in far-flung Eris always here
with you in your cot, our hearth".


(iii)

A storm has struck, singing
with a blue whale's tongue down a corridor
lifting a hill of water we must climb.

A gorilla hand in a gale
has slapped off a corn
I carried on my forehead
growing into a rocky mountain.

The gorilla crocodile-back palm
has scrapped off a veil of cloud
dressing me up with a gown of thorns.

I must climb that mountain
in the smoky ocean of my bed, fishermen
fighting over a skinny woody perch,

while I let storms of memory
settle on my expanding bed,
as I climb a mountain of a wave

to a sky's cubicle of love
tossed by a silver flower
bounced off a thunderstorm, still roaring
under my feet, as I sleep,
shutters of my eyes half-closed.