Baby To Centenarian Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The sky is a baby
spilling candy

from the sides of her
red-hued lips

into the scarlet patches
of a giggle.

A nested star's ceiling,
a larva,

spurts and spits out
an imago
in mined scooped-out wings,

the sky still
flushing out cotton specks

after an ablution
for a new beginning.

(ii)

A rainbow melts
into a butterfly

rinsing itself
with gold splashes soaked
and dappled
in moonstone flags.

Clouds in bird wings
squeeze in
a melodeon,

the sky's hardness
shrinking

from sandalwood
to a folded paper fan,

columns of taupe tinder
burning to ashes.

(iii)

Another rainbow flash
hoisted to melt
into a contracting accordion,

as the sky expands
back to its
dancing tone of daisy

and a pale frost
before settling
for its pearl overalls

(iv)

above an old man
sitting on gravel
in his cloudy world -

an old brown-bearded man
with eyes of dusk

surrounded
by circles of pitch-dark
midnight attired in soot:

O crawling tortoise
you're sky carrying
diamonds on your
hooded armored back

freezing
beneath a jacket
of steel wool.

The world in a tortoise's eye
sings
birth and old age

with a blink
of the sky

crawling, as it grows,
into a sarcophagus of death.