Bounced-Back Ball Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Bounced back
into a ball
and floating balloon

with a wandering albatross's
flipped-out wingspan
to face wasps of gusts,

ashy air
made a moth of him,
as he crawled out
from a nest of ants

handing him over
to a wasp-toothed wind.

Swooshed out
from a crater's rumbling
spark plugs
and belts shrieking

on gears with cracked voices,
a grasshopper
lifted and chirped him out.

Black-out in a trailed
night of soot,
smoke his only light
in a nebula of stars.

So feathery
was the split breeze
in him

that a worm's crawl
tossed and knocked
him out into bed.

(ii)

He scaled down
to a cloud, ground
to a pulp
and worn out

beyond repair, the bed
the only pad
to brush and rub him.

as he spun and sank,
shot into a pad
in a depth,

the smoothest daze
when wind
brushed him, and storm

rolled him over
to graze his floor
that left him
in a haze's mist.

(iii)

But his punch back
at life's chest
popped him up

and plunged him
into a pit
twice as deep
as his padded depth,

nearing the bed,
clouds and storms
amid flames of faces

sobbing and sniveling
over him
like tree branches

over a bower,
the jumping tower

that scaled him down
into hands flashing
beams across pond-widened

gazes and stares
lighting up fires and flowers.