What Outfit Shall I Wear Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(a muse for grasses and trees)


What Outfit Shall I wear
(a muse for grasses and trees)

(i)

What outfit
shall I wear
after
a surgery

to remove
the cow
and buffalo hide
sludge

and loamy
mud from my grin?

What outfit,
while
my built-in closet
expands across

high-waved
seas
and stormy
skies,

a thousand shades
of hue
sticking out

noses
they cannot hide
in galloping rows
of dresses.

What patch
to put on
over
my torso
of ribs

and bones
in a thin
nylon
of dim light? .

(ii)

I moo and coo
and bellow
with
the scaly skin
of animals

grazing
on the grass
of their brows,

umber fields
left to clothe
themselves
with carob sands

blown by winds
with no hands
to smack
and punch in
the dent of a kiss.

(iii)

Leaving ashes
to fondle
chest
with moths,

shepherds
burning
into brick
and baked clay

the grass and tree
blankets
and sheets

feeding them
with ladles
and spoonfuls
of cackles.

The sky still
sprays
stars of grass
left in silver
drips of rains

flipping
out arrows
into rivers

to harness
undercurrents
to stand
man on slabs.

(iv)

Drowning
his narrow face
in floods

from eye lashes
and phylum
sprinkles
and down pours

flowing
into flooding
streams

that blow
warmth
into hollow eyes,

when cold
hands
hold the world,

strapped
and buckled
by a stapled grip.

(v)

My scapula
scorched
into brittle,

dry wood
stoops low,
eaten
by fungus;

takes off
all waves
from my neck,

the only
flesh left
of a world
with
little meat,

the slim chord
holding
an empty
head
full of dunes

to carry the glue
of breathing
faces

and herringbone
weaves
of the dead,

the world
carrying
the goo of guilt,

these scavenger
birds
feeding on

lean meat
ripped from
nerves
and spine,

leaving only
a parade
of skeletons
to track

every hollow
of man's
wind
wearing flesh

mulched
by gardens waving
amaranths
of non-longevity.

(iv)

Wear only fat
left of
ant gossip
on conference
tables,

the smear
man pastes on
bones
without flesh,

when meat
spins
the only plastic

to drive
faces into clucking
and peeping

laughs
cracking skies
into a leakage,

when dry-throated
chickens
in a muttering
breeze
wear slim windy
and wiry voices.

(vi)

Tuck in only
shirt and blouse
made of
desert dust

too heavy
for an arthritic hand

burning
stroking candles
to erase pain,


but only ambles
in clouds
to ignite a bonfire
of a mauling pain,

as a fiddling hand
scoops out
no flesh to fit
a poppy button.