Dark Cloud Of A Dethroned Mane Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A tussock cloud of an animal
roared, as a sky shook
with a leakage, a brown mane
shredding a hare into rain.

Into red showers flowing faster
than blood from a cut
in the air left by lightning melted off
into a silver bleeding sky.

A tawny cloud of a growl
broke the glass of the sky
into red-edged shards floating

in blood, as a small mammal winced
and moaned to the edge
of a stormy cliff, breaking all life
out of its breath.

(ii)

The only beast that left
the mane-clothed roar in bleeding
cuts and deep wounds
planted like hibiscus trumpets
on the lion's thin skin

spun air with horns to puncture
the lion's wild trombone-blowing bellow.
The buffalo who finished
his job on the lion with the final say,

left hose-flushed blood
dripping like thickened drizzles
from the eyes of the fleeing lion.

But the lion bounced back
in a fire of an ire
that mangled antelopes and goats,
as heavy clouds of death
fell and sent chills through the land.


(iii)

As crimson clouds weave themselves
in the air, the lion is slimmed
down into a narrow taupe cloud streak,
ribs stuck out like fingers
of a decaying tree branch

hanging down form a tree the beast
will never climb,
its paws and arrow-pointed teeth,
a mere breeze brushing
its fur no more glued to its stemmy bones.

O lion, the golden cloud
thicker than the tawny clouds
of tall grass tufts that harbored it
in a fort of grassy jungle,

you walk on broomstick
legs now, your thick clay-furred flesh
now a bleached cloud
in your tottering hobble,

a feather of the bird you
last clawed and shredded into dust.

You're now the dethroned king
of a jungle in flames
and ashes - thinner than the gossamer
wings of death bearing you.