Brittle Bridge Of Love Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Jewel, one stony drop,
clotting silvery stream
of salty water
from a bowl
of sorrows lands

on her chest's
expanded cushion
with a thud, a bulbul

taking over
a robin's dragged sigh.

One beaded string
of a stream
poured down a sky
burning out sun

bounces on a charred
twirling hearth
in misty ashes flying feathers
of love, a son

having crossed over a bridge
collapsing into a deluge.
No more girders
to fling her to the anchorage

block of her wooden
stool bawling to her to stop
another storm wave
to flip out of leaking tropes

(ii)

One silver pebble
from red eyes
burns flesh on cheeks
like a thorn's hook

hurled from a fire-lined
flower to fly off
with a bumblebee
butterfly's coat crossing
the breaking bridge.

On the bank across,
where yellow orchids burn,

leaving only ashy
strings of stars that sailed
over the drifting land,

she's left with a sparrow's chirp
to sing the boubou's
mourning song fluted
through feathers of dust and mist.

(iii)

A mid-day night
of expectations with no wicks
to turn on
flames and petals

from the broken stalk
of a withered brittle flower
only darkening her path

home to the songbird
that once tore through clouds
in a cot with no bridge
to her warm and brittle chest.

Let daylight's nebula
crown her with the sun
that bounces up
with the swoop of rising white birds
and stars from a gorge of fireflies.