Dark Sea Of Night Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

What sea of darkness
carries me, drifts me
in the breeze of my breath.
What floating mass
of times glide with me.

As I roll over my new
mattress, ballooning me
into the heavy flying
bladder sipping in more air

to roll me into a field
of rattling breath grabbing
sticks for a size drum.

O passengers in a floating
cabin of night, everybody else
snoring, as I take in
a deep breath. To fuel
sleep on an empty tank,

when night has built its full
tall and rising wall.

Jumping and skidding thro',
my rolling balloon on a book
I cannot read without
quiet erupting giggles.

Chewed and gulped down
by a drowning silence
with a widening crocodile mouth.

(ii)

We're slipping by a windy
wharf. We're sliding on
an onyx darkness
building up stray black sheep,

as night whirrs and bleats
through fur in the blanket
that covers the world.

I'm skidded from bank
to bank by the still-
shifting shore of my bed
swollen like a swan's back
on a slippery wind.

Curved in by an arching
tree branch in the whipping
gale dying as it rises
from a tornado's drum
and ringing flute of a soft wind.

I'm tossed towards a rising
ceiling fenced in by palisades
of a shrubby darkness
pushed into the hour
of a night's flapped black-out,

when suns of splashed light
die, as I get close to midnight.

And jerky stone-throwing
by frolicking children of sleep
begin their chimed play
with the thick whistle
of an insect's throttled chirp.

(iii)

The sundial turns its clock
with a shifting pulling flow
of moments wrapped up
in taps and knocks,
a spring bed talking alone.

A black-bandaged moon arc
flattens into a glistening
ebony disc drawing black ink
for the squiggles of a short wind.

A wheeled bed of dark night
still sets its time piece
to carve out sparks from iris
and pupil. From dying stars
unclothed by my gaping
window. Sighing. Coughing.

Sneezing in the puffs
of a moth-dragged breeze,
as a giant black bird
of sleep pulls me into its net
on this dark sea of night.