Button Up In Loose Winds Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Eyes, drizzle not.
In a cloud, row tree-branch
arms of wind
in a fisherman's canoe

flowered with silver
tails and gold eyes of fish
to bring you back home
to your unbuttoned shirt.

Button up time
when waves spray loose birds
to flap wings

like petals in flowers'
mumbling lips, when passing dudes
bawl out fire and flames
from knotted strings of clouds.

(ii)

Ears, ring the bells of the hour
ground into a flash
of lightning igniting palm leaves
to sing an old hymn
with a staccato refrain

Sharp razors of wind-drifted
showers shave
a shore of liter flying at me
with flowering butterflies
amid jumping chirping

How about stretching
myself out
like the thick feather-tailed
broomstick of a wave's
leakage, a thin nylon thread.

Time thins out with pinnate
palm leaves whistling into slow-rolling
of beaded water
shot off the beach
to hang a garland on my neck.

I unlace my tight arms
Into palms spread out
to join hands slowly
with fibers of sun-flashed moments

from a moment-dragged
strings of flashes,
these silver wires of water

curving off in slithers
to roll down on soft slopes.

(iii)

In the bed of a mid-air
breeze spitting out tentacles
of drizzles and mist

held high by a sailing wind
on the blue-faced Indian Ocean
swinging to a breeze,

I listen to every slosh
beneath your feet
sing the lyrics of the cassowary

rolling eyes to nibble off
a piece of me
with a single peck dropped

like a rocker sipping
every drip of life, when red lights
burn with a sun's
glowing cackling coals

dripping through palm trees
in an evening of pinnate leaves
sleeping with sneezes

from roller skating breezes
in a circus, looking for
life's starting point at the tail
of a flung broken wave.

(iv)

In a breeze needle lips
of old memories pierce
and bite off flesh,

flowers from sun
leaving only bones

from shredded petals
still breaking into pink specks
without withering
on the wiry path of life
pulled and pushed off

like the rusty strings
of an old beach's guitar
in a storm-dragged hand.

Victoria, Mahe - Seychelles 1992