Clouds Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Clouds of books scattered
in piles across a cubicle
and down the plateau. They tumble
as low as a grassy rug

and run into a dark grey mass
of old newspapers. Coin
and fossil hills and valleys
of rejected tipped notes shift

and slip over a volcanic
trashcan rumbling with a hand
trying to scoop out

an old missing scrap. But more
and more scraps of stratus
pile up to the east.

(ii)

The clouds drift up
a sky of tall shelves floating
with anchor and dove wings
of thicker clouds

stretching out to flap wings
and pour down older notes,

itemized scribbles crawling
like hundreds of ants
rushing to an anthill of pebble
mini-flip-charts twisted

and sailing above the upper
window of a cubicle

already full of old ruffled
porpoise sheets ripped
from old feathery magazines.

(iii)

All is foggy up
to his sleepy head awakened
by the rumble of wheels

pushing crates of papers down
an aisle flanked by cloudy
clouds drinking white
and Bordeaux wine,
where stacks of shiny documents

swirl and twirl
into the watery color
of a cloudy dawn.

But nimbus clouds overcrowd
his exploding head
now grown into a thick fog, a starry
screen of shady ideas,

a candidate to flunk an exam
at the center he's scurrying to,
scampering off like a squirrel

down flights of stairs, as he melts
into crowds of cloudy students.