Tulip Fire Drops Of Tears Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(soothing an Ambazonian lady in tears)

(i)

Look at those tulip
gobs of red ink
flying in the storm
to touch down
on the splitting face

of earth in fissures
after a fiery
cackling thunderstorm.

Your face
is all drenched
in those gobs.

Push back
the rising, jumping
hot geysers
switching on

your thorns
and sinking pins
of buzzing pain

into another round
of jerks
and convulsed
squawks

from a widening
mouth of burning
slobber
and cleaving chokes.


(ii)

Let a dying
thunderstorm
take over
the cauldron poaching

you into a sizzle
and back
to the pounding

heavy rain
eroding you cheeks

into barnacles'
flesh stuck
to a mighty whale

of you thinning
into a crab,
as you scratch and shred

the only thin
flesh left of you,

as you sink
into the claws
of a crawling
spider crab,

the pincers-carrying
giant crab
waiting
for its turn to scrape

your undulating face
already full
of hilly bumps

into peaked tops
a rocky mountains
carried by alligator
lurking quietly

beneath your grassy
swampy face
raising more reptiles

to grab
and gulp down,
a prey of you,

a bobbing head
with no wings to flap,
as you slim down

into a lizard's
slithering
tail fighting

off the firm grip
of the viper
swallowing you
into the hot bowels

of your pricking
wails and snivels.

(iii)

Pull off yourself
from that viper
that has left scars

on your
barnacle-ridden face.
And swell back

into a comet-struck
piece of thinning night,

as beaming
daylight begins

to settle
with albatross-stretched
wings
on your narrow face.