Tesseract Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

No square world running. Running
on wheels through sea bumps.
Not the piked triangle
of a tent, a flat deck's sail
pulling a floated train through its wagons,

a tide of waves, every jump
of water a hill to climb
on God's mass of cloudy ether.
And a deep valley to dive into.

The blue and emerald mass of water
pulls itself along, pushes
the still wave-ridden sea from edge
to edge down a widening column,

the sea stretching itself out
like a catapult at work firing a mere pebble
from its cobra-mouthed leather,

no venom oozing out, but the sea pushed out
with a bulldozer's punch flung to break
the sea into pieces of steps on a staircase.

Every horse gallop of water
a staggered mountain
a chopper must pull down

flying only with soft hands
and condor bow-and-arrowed wings.

(ii)

The mammy wagon drives itself through
a storm wave at sea,

leaving boxes and bags swimming faster
than drowned passengers, the only driver
a puffin steering the wings of a wave

splashed to saw off streaks of lightning falling
from a curved and sinking sky
spraying its stars across a rainbow's spectrum,

a volcano's mouth on high seas
flipping out phoenixes to their homes of flames,
as sun jumps down and stoops too low.

(iii)

I'm not at sea. I'm not on land.
I'm just on a broad-mattressed bed in my room
of cubic ceiling and cubic floor.

I'm just the well-knotted messenger
on a Chief Executive's desk,
bowing to hand-carry a file with wing-flipping birds
for a microscope floating

only on the sea of a scientist
carrying the world on her head to the rock
down the narrow path
in the middle of my winged bed in my room.

Not on land. Not at sea.
I'm floating in the tesseract that cures COVID-19.