Broken Canoes Of Grasses Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In tottering
and paced
racing puffs
and elastic gales

drawing out
slingshot catapults,

buzzing winds
spanner out
bees' mouths
to rattle and blow

into hornets
in the drizzle-
cutting
sighing winds

stretching snaky
tentacled arms.

In the overgrown
bush of tall
lying
sleeping snoring,

sneezing
and coughing
elephant
grass stems,

breezes
hum
and stretch
themselves out

in the rustling
wind
gleaming
in the crackling sun,

as more light
is flashed out
from a sky
of silver sun

to cut through
wet glass
and plastic air

with feathers
from the gold rays
of a roaring hot
alabaster
and silver light.

Igniting
drizzle-polished bushes
to swim
in their emerald moss.

(ii)

Flip out
your wings,
O drifting
cyan sea
of wet green

pinnate
and palmate
leaves

and weaves
of weeds
and undergrowth.

Stretch out
your wavy wings,
as ripples
of watery winds

ride sideways
bicycles
across a sea
of slippery grass.

(iii)

The old men
paddle
their canoes
with their
walking canes,

knocking down
and raking
through
rough green

waves
and sweeping
drizzles of rolling
wet shrubs,

and somersaulting
crawling grasses.

And rising stems
folding
over their arms.

(iv)

O drizzling
winds, do not
thicken into
broomsticks

to sweep
off sheets
of cream plastic air,

as you whip
the old men's
hardened
leather
of wrinkled skin,

leaving them
no hands
to paddle
their canoes

already broken
in storm waves
of clawed
and thick
thorny grasses,

more stretchy
grasses
curving over
to do a front crawl.