Dancing With Waves Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Sunlight bounces on me,
a restaurant
on a stone arc serving crickets
and grasshoppers.

I've also feasted
on blattodea,
a greasy meal

that has blown me out,
but quickly
squeezed me back

into a dry spine of a twig,
a thin man
on yards-tall legs.

(ii)

Wrestler-fisted giants
say my ribs
have dried up

into a basket cage
carrying a small bird
of me,

as I hardly sculpt
myself out
of my woody shadow
with little pith.

But I flex
saw-edged fingers

chiseling off
hard clouds
from the stem

I've turned, jumping
from one arc
of a leaf to the other.

(iii)

I've flipped out
crutches of hind legs
that catapult me

to the face
of the long-lipped
nectar-coated
hummingbird of a man,

who lurks under my perch -
not with a hummed song,

but a tongue's sword
to slash me
into my dry limbs
flung out

with lightning's
silent bye
before palm clasps
palm for a glued hi.

(iv)

In life's storm,
flowery detractors bawl
at my dancing gait,

as I jive faster
than fingers of a gale
under a tree branch

whipping all giant spectators,
a dancing hall
growing into the ladle
of a green leaf,

scooping out a thin man
floating in his ribs,
the mantis who knocked out

a hummingbird
spinning flower and sun.

I'm still the mantis
swallowing cascades of a world
with arches and angles,

an arc dancing
with reptile-curved waves.