Accident Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

On a pile of bog gliding
off in marsh,
man is the molded clay
with engine parts,
a bundle of thoughts wired

together into his bird-like
built, his hands his wings,
his flywheel thoughts.

The rusty bible man
made of dust and mud
for the bones

and flesh that stand
and roll him
on the wheels of breath.

(ii)

He spins also steel
bodywork and nuts of joints
that roll him

on a path running down
life's cliff. Breaking him.
Grinding him into specks
and mud and powder

at a slope's foot
into the log and dusty face

tied up by splashes
of well-sketched sludge,
as he rises from rubble,

his vehicle of thought
having slipped
from whirring birds
and clucking butterflies

of thoughts flapping
a thousand wings in his head.

(iii)

A thought and many thoughts
drive man through
a sun-lit road galloping,

sinking into the gorge
that tossed him onto earth,

when he was born
from a deep womb of night.

And that night wraps him up
into a fly buzzing
with the cutting wind,

when his vehicle flips over,
as he was buried
in a deep snore of thoughts.

Like a roving bat
he's always flying out
of his cave
deepening into the canyon
to bury him,

when a rainbow melts
into silver light.