Desperate Times Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

It's been pouring
and showering, a rainstorm
whisking its bird's leafy tail.

It's been raining
amid howling winds,

baby whimpers fleeing
lion groans, as it thunders
with a large mouth.

I'm stormed by old furniture,
some standing on crutches.

O rock riding rock
in the old rocker flying
my feet into the ceiling

leaning too low
to sit like a softer hat
on my splitting head.

(ii)

The table chair too
has spat out all its nails.
And I hammer myself
Into a larger sailing seat.

And if the boulder
of my couch
collided and crashed
into the feet

of a bouncing wave-hit
bank shifting into
the punching fists of a rising
wig-wearing storm wave,
I'd dive into it.

I'd fly over swooshing waves
to catch a blue fin
before I'm overtaken
by a lurking tail-whisking shark.

(iii)

And if the hillock
at a watershed's floating edge
on the wet corner
of my davenport

flipped over down
to the sandy
creeping bloating shore
of a rough rug stretched out
on my floor without a face,

I'd rush down, I'd rush down
the tide of crocodiles
of old sprawling shoes
in a drilled march

to the drifted lake in a bucket
of water by my seat.

Rain has warbled out
songs of desperation

on my roof, warblers of toys
diving backed back to trees

between trees hanging on
the roots of a floor
no longer holding in
a hurricane of rags.