Broken Anvil And Hammer Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Boom, boom - hammer on drum
from a thunder's gorge-deep throat.
A cling and clang,
hammer on anvil like a teacher's fist

dropped on a shrunk desk
to blow a red hibiscus flower in its full flames
out of the dot of a dim bud.

Toc toc clang, a clock's tick and chime.
No, a knock at the door and a necklace
dropped from a lady's neck.
No, it's a hammer
talking to a shoe's sole, driving
a nail through a sole to chat

with the stud raising its voice
on a marble floor
in a storm of file-carrying walkers spitting
fat red eyes and magma
from breaking mouths, an ash cloud
of a volcano forming over

cloudy heads and shoulders, noses taller
than castles of air, picking up
a grilled hamburger and chicken thigh,
the rest of the world inedible,

as experts and clerks
pull each other's neck tie,
for a missing red dossier
and docket carrying claws and beaks,

eagles already flapping their wings
for the hook that must catch the fish of a lie.

(ii)

Life is hammer and anvil, a round-headed
rod punching a smooth body,
the bell yelling from a deep orifice's voice.
Life is an old clock's chirping cricket,
pulling ears to the ax falling on the log of time.

Slam, slam. The ax slams not biting
wood's dusty flesh
to bleed with the pus and scars on wood's peelings
ground to cedar and carob dust

that powders a lumber's face
to swirl with the cloudy wall
of a sawyer's see-saw world on a slope.

Birds sing in his slash-and burnt ears,
every sound the hammer hitting the world
on its head, driving in a nail
to seal the box of boulder-heavy files.

The files contain fish and crabs
and the mushroom tentacles of an octopus,
its gills hiding the clerk
in the big pond who saw a man
in an eclectus parrot's oversized blood-stained shirt.

(iii)

Dive into the pond, drop into water
with hammer and anvil
and the fisherman's net
to cast over shadows
for the fish among speckled trout.

Clerks and experts pile over
each other like ants in anthill,

carrying boulder and towers on tongues -
too heavy to flip out truth

with only a hammer
to drive in a nail of truth into weevil-eaten
and fungus-numb wood,

as they swim in a pool
with too many hammers on them,

life not always hammer and anvil,
but blooming flowers in a night-cloaked garden,
all gems widening their eyes,
hammers and anvils broken.