A Dance Of Mollusks Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Dive into
a wavy sea
of joy
in ripples

and ash-pulled
feathers

on the swinging
calamus
of a dancer
brewed
and woven

from foam
and spume,

when times
spin and weave
threads
of shredded
wavelets

hanging
on a swimmer's
latex neck

pulled and pushed
like a goose's
clayey curve

from wings
to an arrowed
flamy beak
bobbed and shot

with a beaded
garland
of cream petals,

soap suds
of a cleansed sea
swinging
a dancer from
side to side.

(ii)

As a sea swings
on its pivot
to let a windmill
sketch
more ripples
of splashed joy,

life goes on,
clinging to an axis
of sea

only a toy
of an animal
dancing to its tune,

when feet
drum leather
of earth
and drop
with a gonged thud.

(iii)

Dive into
the sea
of a swum dance
in swarming
buzzing ripples,

bees in water
flapping wet wings
to spin
the swimmer
of a dancer

guided by a jelly fish's
flashed light,
legs in afterfeathers
rattling with cowries,

the only shells
always harboring
a numen
in a lumen,

a lightning step
of rattling
mollusk shells,
leaving
a spider-legged dancer
a shell of himself.