Broken Canoe Of A Bed Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Does a man in shreds
glide or drift in paced steps
in his last hour

under a star teetering
over his shadow
he cannot see and hear?

Does he creep through
moon-lit faces
having burnt out
suns leaving twirling specks

and dry leaves
of brittle memories
to fade in a dying breeze?

Or in his chains
tied to the bed
cleaving his ropes of breath

into thin breaking threads
and flying feathers of a wheeze,
does he roll himself up
in a thin zephyr to weave

a heavy-coated bird
still whispering to him,
as he's flung over
to the dangling hammock

across reptile-infested
waters of death
warbling and ringing
to his stony heavy eyes
and storm-wrapped breaking ears?

Does he crawl on weevilled
wood over a river
to croon with his last stretch
of a singing breath,

whispering and crackling,
as the tide breaks
near a cliff of water's descending escalator,
silver drifts jumping
over kneeling cascades?

(ii)

In the babbling river
of lurking, lurching moments,

only spidery splashes
lick stretching taut flesh,
as a storm rolls

on faster wheels
through a racing tunnel
of bouncing spirals.

Let his tapered canoe poke through
dark screens of mist

thickening a sheet of haze
into night covering him
with a warm cloak of unfeeling
numbing him to a shore,

as a wind's span
raises hands to beat off a wall
of rising sky-lifting waves
rolling on bleached
parches of splitting clouds.

In the broken canoe of his bed,
his hands chained to rails,

he cannot cling to the misty tree
of his last wobbling breath
racing to strike a gong ricocheting
with a voice behind a mountain.