Catch A Breeze Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(from a Storm)


(i)

Are those frogs
croaking
with groaning voices
at night's tide,

when night falls
with the ebony
arms and kicking,
dribbling legs

of a closely stitched
jungle, branches
wild punching
arms crafting jabs

and swung
uppercuts from
a tornado's thrust?

Is that a gale
cut off from
a typhoon's crowned
head grown
into a rolling nimbus?

Is it the tall
hat wearing tempest
walking with
an ostrich's lanky

legs, its massive
backside
the rolling swelling ball
of a hurricane, when
winds sing
and rainstorms wail?

Chop off
a gale's neck
before
it dives through

to wrap me up
under its armpits,
a sprinting wind
mewling
with flying cat eyes.

Let a giraffe-
galloping storm
slow down

at the gates of me
too breezy with birds
to swallow a storm.

(ii)

From a storm
I catch only
A tit-flipped
and wheeled zephyr

flowing
through lace tunnels
in a pitch night,

when darkness
shines its
back like a rolled-down
piece of black leather

and a wind plucks
banjo strings
amid roaring
lions of zigzagged air.

Let a storm
brush me
with a reed's palms
and fingers
thrown at me
with feathers
of a lawn-floating dove

trailing
the swimming pigeon
tiptoeing
on elastic winds.

From a galloping
horse storm,
ride on the quiet saddle
of a tortoise's breeze,

when eagles
and hawks
walk on streets,

and men with winged
bow ties
fly off to the high desks
of CEOs, the janitor
peeping one breezy eye.

Let a gale slip by,
as you catch a breeze
from a steel-chained
storm tapping gongs.