Cuffs Of Gloom Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

O volcano, spit me out
From the typhoon
Of a bubbling mumble and shriek,
As I flow into a spring
In a glen of singing weavers:

How a flower's mouth
Trumpets in sun beams to dance
Over my cup of coffee,
As a sky of dark clouds hangs

Over wriggling vapors,
Makes me see the moonbeam
Pleated satin of my daughter
Bulldozed into a journey
To metanoia's glowing tower,

From where panting doves
Land by a shrub
Next to my coffee table only
To take off in a swoosh -

To knock at doubled slabs
Blowing out a wall's flesh.

(ii)

As I gallop through
A strait in Sirius

Over my cold
Cup of coffee brushing me
With vapor, I fall
Into a stroking cage of sleep.

An officer trudges in, scurries
To my table, hoists
A blade of paper
And takes me home to my door,

Flowers of a grin
Waved at me, as he dims out,

A zephyr of snugness
Tumbling on me
Like a fluttering butterfly, '

His silhouette
Piercing the front gate.

(iii)

I stand at my door woven
Into fibers of a growing cloud
Exploding into a shower
Of rays from Venus:

Is this not the door
To the officer's house,
Where handcuffs
Bloom on a flower's neck?

No threat of another arrest,
But a soft voice
From a tower in Icarus
Filtered through
A sun ray's throat:

I'm your daughter
Knocking at your door
Through a ray

Scooping you out, a steel key
Welded out of shacks
Under a melting gibbous moon.

I'm the harness
Of a rainbow's stretchy petal
Wheel-lifting
A feather of breath
From the dungeon of you

To breathe in deep
Nectar from flapped wings,
The sunbird's takeoff
From a spectrum's spun petal.