Below A Cloud Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Below a cloud
planting legs into earth,
as hands hang

on a perch carrying
a frozen budgerigar
and a muttering sparrow,

the shifting forest
scales down more ladders
and staircases of hills
to land on its strip

cutting nose
with burning, flaming eyes,

the smell of fuel
served on corroding tables
standing in the fire
of index fingers

pointed at an old man
beaming with a crown
over a chest
of uncounted new green bills

crawling amid feathers
of old moldy tokens.

(ii)

Below a nimbus cloud
flipping out
chopped and unstringed drizzles
from sky's dry mouth,

children play soccer balls
with stomachs unpumped to fill

empty limping spaces
pushing out gushes
from rumbling engines of life.

Yet morning's starch
devoured likeheavy clouds
ties them together
with heavy roots sticking them

to earth even as they run
out of the flame that keeps
their candles burning

on mantis legs and grasshoppers'
upper limbs carrying
a sun ray's gun
to shoot through sooty pillars
and roofs seized by storm
riding a bicycle - not a racing car.

(iii)

Below a cloud of folks
trapped in a dark bird's tail
hanging down
with more night in dark coats,

the king's crown
shimmers and shoots forth
the fire of a people's flower

to glow with wounds
served on center tables,
newspapers speaking with chapped lips,

as chirping children carry
the world in gleaming eyes
flashing outshadows
of their dwarfed spirit,

as a flame floats a butterfly' wing
the stunted moth
sinking in its waxy dress,
as a chortling candle burns out.