Broke Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Out of dollar bills and slippery dimes
and dust-coated and lumpy quarters
from my chest of lilies
and dry shrunken and withered roses

to buy gems from a flea market
of pink and beige dusk rags of clouds,

every bead of a star dug out
and paid for with a broken hand,
I let a wounded robin ride a bicycle

on a saddle of breeze and wind
with no handlebars, its pedals
flying with a gale gliding on one hundred legs.

But it collides with a storm-steered twig
and sings too loudly to craft
a quiet poem of moon and muttering
silhouettes fighting off statuettes

of flame-sculpted logs of shadows
to slide my pen through
stars and sparks from a crude fireside,
only red flies hovering over me.

(ii)

Only gray threads of smoke
tie me with a curled swinging noose,

as I plead to the night's hangman
to spare a broke poet,
as wasps sting every schema of his.

The bonfire having stifled
the a moon rolling off the feather
of my nib, this loud mouth

spitting out crawling ants
on a page grown gray-bearded moon.

As my ants of words are bitten
by fairy flies of sparks,

the fire already sputtering out an ode,
I roller-skate with my melting feather-pen
through ash-paved avenues,

as I pierce flames and dig out
only reddish ashy cents
of the coals that fit a robin's wings
to make it fly to a star.