Sweep Off Your Gloom Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Who abandoned the sun-dried trunk
of a house scratched with
the grids of deep beaming cuts

and floating sauntering bruises
of a shaky tree-branched pillar
to collapse in the sisal ropy storm

tying up folks from toe to head
into the deepening cave of cascades?

Broken croaking sun-dried bricks
dressed in the sprawling mulch
of skeletal times, sculpted

into the spirals and soft creep of air,
chunks of earth's flesh growing
twigs to bounce into large cob webs,

light ceiling sheets punching holes
for dripping and crawling seeds
on ridges and beds running

into red chopped banks blowing
off fleeing rats and frozen lizards.

(ii)

Red flowers, grow a fire to soften
Poking and pinching arrows of pain.
Yellow flowers, spin the ribbons
of air that dapple off healing blood

thinning out into the crab-legged crust
of a nursed wound still sinking
into the bone and marrow of stone men?

Who dug into a mouth spinning
no life, when a breeze
blew with a mantis's creep? Who turned on
spirals and scythe curves
with hands of grass spitting out

weeds and moss to carpet marbled
floors of streets running
into jungles of homes on skipping toad legs?

Who molded and plastered widows
to wail in wallowing rains,
orphans scissoring air to cut
with their palms the rock-chewing man,
a parched tree still standing on its roots,

who slashed and quartered
women and children in their rotors
and whispering spinning helices

into scales and fins of speckled trout
and tails of fleeing bleeding sparrows?

(iii)

Who raised a flag of flames
that mounted the burly-armed phoenix,
who roasted vases of love

for a feast in the cave that rolled
down a cliff and into a deeper valley
between canyon walls of men

glued to spines parched
into ripped fallen twigs and tree barks
and dry leaves crawling on ant legs?

On a street lies a mirror capturing
a cloud, your bleeding
face tumbled into raffia broom sticks,
these spurts of raffia brooms:

Raise them and sweep off your gloom
with love's fan-mouthed broom.