A Mountain Of Pain Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for victims of the Ngarbuh Ntumbaw massacre in Ambazonia)


(i)

The lion roars from sky's grasses of stars.
A sky's glass breaks into shards
from a glistening rainbow-flipped comet.
Lightning splits brittle tears
into rivers flanked by cacti

breathing out the beaming warbling
stone of a bird's endurance
down a hopping, galloping slope.

Up the mountain rock's crown,
from which a firefly skips
into the new star burning in the heart

of a mangled cheek, a shoulder
carrying a heavy red flower
burning with sun between slats of light.

Between lightening's slithering
wounds wind-drifted into red rain drops.

(ii)

The warbler whistles a song
of wind pushing an eternal brook
to the edge of a hill rock's face,

where everything hangs on a thin
thread pulling a baobab log.

Life hangs on a thin filament
from a raffia bush building
an umbrella nook spraying hope

on denizens fleeing their mid-day shadows
devoured by flames molding
them into the rock that explodes

with a spark - into new flames of life
to grow a tree touching sky.

(iii)

Crowned sun shines over
a smoldering hearth of wounds
and bruises ogling hope
with red volcano-lifting eyes.

The children weave themselves
with sun's crown fibers,

and threads stitching them
into a night beaming in bowls

in their hearts. The children
knit themselves into tapestry weaves,

on which they stand, feet
held down deep into earth,

their siblings having found cubicles
by tombstones building
mountains of memory. The sparrow
flies, growing into the flower

of a flame and the smoldering fire
ginger with dawn's new cloak,
dusk flying with a grey and red cloud
bleeding into new rivers.

(iv)

A drop of tear is a bud on a cheek
burgeoning into the flame
of a crawling smirk growing slowly

into a mountain, wooden bones
breaking under the tree, from which man
is built to warble in the branches,
when it rains and pours,

before night grows its own tree
of clouds to creep below a brow.
Creeping caterpillars of tears burn
life's brittle breaking flesh with flashy swords.

Every mountain is Mount Calvary.
Folks, as you nibble off a steak
in an eatery, let a viper swallow its spit.

Let the sprayed arms of cordyline
cover you with the scent of day-lilies.
Let red and yellow magenta flames
hug daisy flowers waving flags of love.