A Worm Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Seconds creeping into
light-hours to Uranus,

a rocket leaving
a taupe worm-like trail,
as it pierces sky's mud.

Just time to stitch
beads of broken slimy mud
to pull and scoop out

the slug from a shadow
of mud in buds
growing into marsh.

And a worm the color
of mud pulls
its belly along, slithers
through like a thread

of soft doughy clay
sewing the fabric
for a pipe and saucepan's
earthenware for a king

puffing out a trail
of smoke into the air,

that white cotton
worm carrying
cowrie-enclosed thoughts.

(ii)

O worm, the elongated drool
to creep out of an old
king's mouth grown
muddy with chewed kola nut

spat out in a chunk of slug
to fly between the lips
of a bird flapping its wings

by a centipede dragging
its belly like a painter's white patch.

Dropped from a leaking sky
carrying buckets of daisy paint
to spray over burning marsh.

From which a garden symphylan
marching with a message
from a worm

hands over a breeze
of flamy butterflies,
a caterpillar-coated worm

having burnt out a hamlet
before the end of a worm's trip
winding like a zephyr-pulled river,

the king sighing out
a worm from a trumpet
not heard
behind the mountain
of his ear lobes.

And a village is burnt
into ashes before the worm's
return from Uranus.