A Photon Jump Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Leap when no ceiling
handles stretch
themselves out to hook
your breaking fingers.

Jump, soar and hang
in firm, teeth gnashed
and eyes
bleeding like twilight moons
with a gust's thrust

and a crab's grip
on a firmament's branches,

its tree rising
with leaves whispering
into your rabbit ears
capturing ants' voices,

as ants raise
an anthill
into an Egyptian pyramid

built and plastered by
mandibles
but do not fall,
as you land with boots
of mud and bog.

(ii)

How do you gallop
without steam
or the thrust of a volcano
in your horse's neigh?

On life's splitting saddle
still cracking
with breaking twigs

and a branch
on a hang man's noose,
a loop in a scorpion's creep,

how do you jump
to touch the sky

when the donkey
from your forced breath
steered by a horse's gallop -

one more inch
of stretched
landing hooves

and one more push
is not carried
by a stormy bray
that ignites lightning -

across a slashed
piece of trembling sky
breaking into flying pieces,

robins diving
into each other,
threads from a spider's?

An elastic horse-rider
lands on the other side,

a river widening
with two worlds,
each on their separate banks,
the horse neighing
with a horse-rider's whinny,

light roaring
and tossing out
faster spears

to pierce gossamer edges
of an evaded miss
with no landing hooves.