Stone And Ball Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A ball is a millipede
picked up
by a fear-frozen kid
and flung against a wall
of banana stems.

The train animal
drops without rails
to hoot it to the firmament,
but tightens itself
into a knotty cocoon,
the woven stone

that bounces on the wings
of death
into a scrolled piece of life,
but does not die
out of a mountain's breath.

The railed animal,
only a possum rolled up,
as it flattens itself
into death's hands

tossed and blown off
by the passing growling lion,
stone in its eyes
dying into a sheep shank,

a ropy worm stretching
in elastic cushioned joints
of a bone flying back
into bobbing, jumping life.

(ii)

What ball doesn't bounce,
expect a millipede's
molded into the tire
rolling with no air - no bladder
that bounces a soccer ball,
but the fire that breeds life.

But a millipede
steered by no balloon of life
rolls down a flying cliff
to land on bog,
the pillow that stretches it back
into life on its rails.

A stone of a millipede
catapulted
by a kid's fear-burnt hand
sinks into deep mud,

burying itself, a stone,
in a regolith's fort
that lives on forever like air.

(iii)

How round or flat is air
whizzed out
of the crawling millipede,
a ruffled bladder?

But drunk with air,
the bladder rolls
between dribbling legs
and hammer feet,

chiseling off a soccer ball
to fly into a net,
bouncing with life,

a crowd tossing off thunder
that falls with a bounce,
breathing out roaring lions
from a glassy sky

in shards,
while men and women
scroll themselves
into millipedes igniting
fire in their core

to bounce with the flames
that don't burn out
balloons of stony elastic joy
exploding
into a volcano's mouth
of red and yellow flowers.