This Way Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

This way to the path squeezed
into thorny bushes, trees
singing down a slippery track.
A dove rolled off from here,

a penguin in boots tobogganing
into the wave that drifts it back home
in waters washing off man's wounds

with hands glued for a mutter

in soft winds, when storms kick
and butt with a gemsbok's hands
winding through a storm
on its raised sky-poking head.

This way making a broken boat
out the storm that mounted walls
and crashed on rolled-off ripples
melting with a hearth-blowing sun.

(ii)

This way by a sea lane pulling waters
into a watershed's basin,
where the dove was seen taking a dip
when splashed skies fell on its back,

as it drooled and grumbled off
to land on a piece of my feathery breath
flapping the wings of a sea gull
to land rays brewed by a gloomy bowl

from a dark flower, a body of night
growing inside a man pulling off hands
off mountains of clouds
in his pocket whispering with a lone robin,
that voice that chased him down

into a hole spraying itself into a wound
this way by a flame of pain
on his thigh rocking a baby
into a road flung off from the dirt road

that made it scream at an ibis's
maracas ripping off the quiet of dawn
into pecking little birds

sipping their own voices from a tall glass
of clouds not yet settled
at the drifting bottom
of translucence with a looped screen.

(iii)

This way, where we carve out bogeys
on the head of thinking bushes,
where grasses sprout out
of a sky's path on earth, stars in syzygy

marching down slopes to point torches
at the home of the lost penguin
down there under the swollen mountain
of a wave folding up dark blankets,

as a bird rolls of a cutting wave
clinging to a rainbow-pushed and pulled song

planting flowers for the missing body
on shore full of the sunny flames of storm.

This way to the rainbow's home
always drifting to flip out its widening
umbrella, where all men
hurled off to shore by a storm of sun

find a nook in a flamy garden,
every flower tickling a blind sunken eye.