Between Tumbling Canyon Walls Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Flanked by the embankments
of two tall suitcases
and a leaning pile of boxes,
I crawl, stooping through.

Rubbing my shoulders
against hanging, swinging clothes,
I glide on a wet slippery floor.

And dive through floating
shirts and blouses to land
on a screeching pad at the entrance
to the bathroom's hanging cave.

(ii)

I flutter too, my only wings
hands paddling through
a narrow wet strait of sprinkled water
by a whimpering door

to a bard's bath room, showers
warbling out a winding epic
at the touch of a talkative spout.

Between two old broken
panels of a deep bath
rising canyon walls of broken porcelain.
Between two mountains
of fat panels, a sky of a ceiling spins above.

(iii)

Between crawling walls
jumping high to a half-lit sky, a star
of a bulb the only light
leaving the space sooty.

Under dark clouds of vapor
from hot scalding water,

a hot river roasting me from toe
to waist. I pant and drown
in a breathless tiredness
clothing me with a mist of hopelessness,

but find a mop to paddle
my way through to a wet bed room.

(iv)

All is wet, as I pedal low boxes
and paddle the canoe to take me
to the desk manager's booth,

from whom the spiraling teeth of a smile
shines the first sun on me
throughout my stay in the guesthouse,
whose wall-lined cartons tumble,

growling and groaning,
as I scamper off for a meeting
in a desert. Participants rise

in spread-out sand dunes
of heavy clusters of faces barking out

regrets for getting wet
for a parched patchy meeting
of burnt-out rocky folks.