Wind Of Night Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Soot flows down
with a curtain of night
tightening the lips
of its thin narrow slats,

folding over itself again
and again to find
the windy slab
of a whispering dimmer shade.

Wind screams, snivels
and whimpers,
as I filter my way through
dark blinds of night

and grope with groaning
gusts and dark dust
through a blackout

and shout-outs for piercing
a black-gauze and bandaged
night bleeding with more
dark blood and drifting smoke.

Winding down more
dark screens from
whistling air shutting me
out of night's corridor.

(ii)

In the wind, stretched
hands of dark smoke
engulf me into a walking,

drifting, tottering cloud
of me, my muffler
a dark animal's tail hanging
down to my chest

already a deep dark hole
harboring broken
nimbuses of a past jungle

of life spent washing
dishes after midnight, when
my hand's eyes see

and scratch off every
cakey layer grease sticking
like ticks on a dog's skin;
gripping like pulling scars
I try to scratch off.

(iii)

I've spent my life
opening doors through
bolted slabs and walls

of night hardening
into harder doors of night
punching night to fall

on night, as I walk down
a stormy strip
on a night that flattens out

dark screens, on which
I see my life's crow tails
and cold hearth skin

unfolding like a planet
outside my whirlpool
and jumping tornadoes,

a blackout's windy night,
whose opening
to my doorsteps,

as I return home late
is a narrow window of will.