Dark Red Cloud At Noon Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for slain Ambazonian school children massacred by CameroUn's BIR militia at Fiango, Kumba)

(i)

Who dawdles along,
waving a red cloud
of fluttering plain weave

zigzagging on blanket
stitches stretched out
to dark graphite edges of night
in cream and silver daylight?

Who waves and swings
dark scarves over
the glow of stringed hearths
popping and crackling?

What storm swerves
by under a mid-day
sun spraying drizzles
of red drops of rain

from a deep volcano's
red seeds raising
stiff straightened poles

to prop drifting black
brick walls collapsing
into a volcano's red mouth
pouring out spinels?

(ii)

What garnet patch
feathered with dark edges
hangs too low to be
seen and smelled,

spreading hawk
and eagle wings to swoop
with a lance's swing
from a popping muzzle?

Who skulks behind
a wall of soot
and sable thickening
the swelling width
of a swaying jet black?

Who lurks behind
a red cloud
clothed in nimbus
and the fat wing
of night's silent eagle,

flame in mouth,
spinning in a drizzling
red cloud
hanging from
its stretched hoopoe beak?

(iii)

A scarlet cloud
floats over
a mass of drifting rock,

slabs and slates
spinning in a zephyr,
every limb a martyr.

All swirl in coated
swimming flesh
covered with splashes

and red flowing
and trickling streams.

Maroon streaks
also flow in beads
over numb hands

and limbs, the hour
striking bells
to call in tanagers

and finches to scream
and wail, the bunting
tucking in its red shirt.

Lime lightning has struck
with a yawning muzzle,
leaving red feathers
of oozing blood to fly.

(iv)

The scarlet ibis seizes
the stretching crimson
sunbird's tail,
but breathes in little sun,

when dusk ignites
dawn to flame
and burn,
a bleeding ceiling hanging
over splayed wounds

and spraying feathers
and showers of light
to etch out scribbles

made by stroking
gods at children's
whimpering
and squeaked sniveling,

a slimming chorus
leaving ashes
from an overbright sky
of blinking stars,

as sun wheels
in new billowing light.

O children, grab
an amaranthus stretching
with an ivy
flower under a lotus light.

Let your brisk march
take you draped in poppies
through a deep
tunnel of arched trees
muttering with a zephyr,

as you hit a splash
of rainbow
in a breath's firmament.