Back Home On Giraffe Back Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

What cloudy
morning, the sky
roaring,
as high-pitched

voices on earth
drum and clang,
tongues
clicking and rolling.

Last evening,
when the sky
had burnt itself out,
leaving ash

and soot to hang
over earth
and break tongues

loose and wriggling
with chat
and gossip,

Akem left
the house.
said he was
diving

to a store to pick
up handy
clothes, but missed
his way back
home,

straying to onyx
clouds. Nobody
has seen or heard
from him -

not even by cell-
phone.
No thin zephyr
of him.

(ii)

His room hangs
on the third
floor
of an extended
family villa

spreading out
from its feet

a sprawling yard
full of lawns
and a rolling
undulation

of shrubby
and tall sky-brushing
trees braiding air.

(iii)

As Akem was found
nowhere under
a tree,
whistling and singing
with sailing
and racing winds,

he must be hiding
amid stars
and suns of warmth
in a room,

as nobody heard him
drive and screech
through
in the garage.

Did he ride
a tall sky-stroking giraffe
that dropped him
high by his window
on the third floor?

"No", thunders
a voice. "I've been
riding through
a deep gluing sleep

No giraffe galloped
with me back
home,
as I would have slipped
off its neck
and died
in smithereens".