Cloud Across A Street Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A hurricane has knocked
at earth's door
with the tightened fist of a bang.

The street explodes
with a volcano's mouth
throwing out a storm,

into the hibiscus trumpet
of a woman fluting breath.

Drill a hole into a typhoon's
flesh, when sky is broken
into shards, wrinkles
blooming with thorns

And a buzzing roaring flame
unfolds the woven fire
of a blazing woman pulling
a mountain of life.

The street draws out
a drifting cumulus cloud,
this cotton wool
of a woman crawling

on all fours, her child
pick a back, a petal
of a finger-sipping gem
buckled by a loin cloth,

man's sturdiest roof
over a house built
of beaded steps, a string
of scrapes and scratches,

chapped knees swelled
into soles, walking hands
wheeled on dust.

Floppies tugged
into scarred fingers,
her only gloves to punch
earth with hand paws,
as she trudges on.

Woman off to a peak
to pick life's flower,
the only star to shoot light
through a dark crater,

her home every spot,
every ebony night,
sunshine pouring out
showers of soot.

(ii)

But her face full of sun,
bloated with ripples
on a river, flows
with a swelled tree,

the child a seed grown
on a leafy scapula,
breathing in nectar,
a fruit flipped out
from mum's rocker spine.

Where does hilly life
crawl to, when it grows
steeper than a mountain,

a bridge to a meadow
collapsed above
a deluge of chores rising

in the stormy river
with a detritus of scars
floating on her wavy skin,

a thin blanket's veil
warding off heat,
as she swims through
with a crawl on life's road?

(iii)

Through the squeezed strait
of an arms-stretched day,
let a comet burn

from the burping lips
of your drizzle-fattened candle

rattling without bowing to a storm
trickling with silver streams
down your goldenrod cheeks.

Unbolt you chest,
as you crawl
onto Sirius' doorsteps
to find the fire ginger
burning in your inner bowl.