What Is A Bed Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The slowed-down rumble
of flowing night
riding clouds to a hiding sun
in flames and embers.

Choking a sleeping sick man
with no more skin

riding a wooden bicycle
on cobblestones between rock
and mountain-headed boulder.

The bouncing growl
of a leopard
on the tenor of a flute,
when an arrow of alto

has split fibers of air
into rusty strings
and dislocated wires
tearing up flesh

into pain from a red coal
jumping out of a buzzing fire,
its bees leaving no pore
unstung, as the bees fly off

in flamy burning wings
of air brewing a mouthy storm,
leaving a sick man
scrolling himself into a knot.

What flowers crawl out
of a deep crater of wriggles,
fire growing ropes
of worms creeping over themselves.

(ii)

A bed O bed of buds
sprouting into thorns beneath
a dying man.

Yelling to a fleeing nebula
carrying beds
floating with the steam
of life, those stars climbing stars

that never jump down low
to cover the sick
man with a warm shady
film of mist,
the only denim sheet

to flip the sick man over
into a river bank's hands of air
from babbling waters

making his bed flow down
a rainbow-sprayed
strait steering a storm with little space,
as it expands its wings

into a mangled
and grilled-out nerve
singing a song of night creeping
into night on a pricking rug

scrubbing skin, a sick man under drips
still bouncing on rusty strings
shrieking at him with owls' eyes.