Fallow Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In a growing
cloud
of rainbows
clothed
in ashy vests
of hot-lipped
embers,

he's starved
himself
of all breezes
of touch,
all gales
of pulling grins.

And strokes
and brushes
and rubs

that crawl
with hands
of powder
and stick
like goo,

but bounce back
like snapped
mosquitoes
into air caverns.

He's cut
himself off
from rose
and lily rays

and beams
from sun-lit
splashes
on a face

molded into
the transparent
glass of an
inner bowl

with the buzz
of a bee clothed
in gold
and petals full
of sky,

the only
a stain, a pollen
sticking forever
with stars
through night,

a flower face
bound
with a full grip

and stapled
to the spine
of unchameleon
beams and spin.

(ii)

But that lady
from the depths
of my inner
bowl is yet to sprout

and bloom
deep down to
the roots
beyond the loam
that builds her.

She's yet
to be ploughed
in the wild
jungle,

widening ripples
of somebody
in the marsh,

yet to rise
overnight from
a breathing
lotus
that never dies
through
onyx blankets
of night.

(iii)

He's delved
into peonies
and pansies
of grins
and sky-pulling
smiles,

and found
no petal
with cutting
eyes
from the deep

mineshaft
of attachment
to grip
firmer than
icy dew
on morning leaf,

as it rains
in his inner bowl,
and he's
found nobody,

no arm-stretching
umbrella
of the gem-lady
to cover him.

Fallow
to his marrow
and cut off

from the sparks
of stargazers,

he's planted
into shallow
shadows,

leaving
his inner bowl
fallow and shallow

by a ready
stropped
and wheeled
plough.