Brooding Over Squawking Chickens Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Brooding over shadows
of memory, as he fed
squawking chickens, he was
raised to fly high
through the tallest trees

with other single birds
wandering within
his splayed laid-out self,

a lonely limping sparrow
spinning him through
waves rushing to life's edge.

Where the evening borders
night's early soot
only to dive back into a cream powder.

Here comes the light-splashed
times to sink a past nimbus

into soft funnels to drip off
every patch into a night too early to crawl
in with dissolving dreams.

(ii)

The evening sky is still young
with whitish patches
of clouds squeezing out the last
drops of snow-white milk
to feed a hand-stretched daylight,

the final bright silken rays
the old man loves to sniff
and breathe in,
snorting like a horse -

not out of any cranky itchiness,
but a drunkenness
with a cloudy life full of craters

and eroded gulches
running into deep holes bubbling

with the bleeding wounds
of unexpected thefts
from his only crop farm that sprays
the walls of his gloom

and lays a green path
to tread on,
as he broods over unexpected deaths,

sinking him into a world
of flowers and candle lights.

(iii)

O gold butterflies on candles' lips
murmuring soft songs
to his ears as shredded as rags.

His eyes droop and drop like lumps
of charcoal into the hearth
carrying his smoldering pain.

Burning every creeping scorpion
into spidery ashes,
a wallowing mist, his only curtains

to screen off red stains
and deep dark orifices of pain
punctured through his thin skin

by sweeping axing times
spun off spates of midnight nebula
in bright mid-afternoon daylight.