From Church's Shore To Home's Jungle Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(to the memory of dad)

(i)

We'd been all morning
at the beach of our faith,

where ether-cleansed,
in a Gothic edifice, built out
of unfiltered clay

and stones from the depths
of artifact, we were
awakened to the beacon
of how man
is clothed in feathers of dust.

Showered and embalmed
by sunlight and stroked
by the same rays of dust,
in which he's cloaked. And choked.

In which he's
wrapped and twirls

in life's footsteps, sheets
and sheathes of dust
rising from

the gold of a tombstone
singing with standing
and fallen leaves rolled in scrolls
into a culvert,

as branches in the wind fan
a slab beneath,

to which all
dive back and sink to roots
and new dust
to thicken flesh's slab.

(ii)

The priest had been breeze-fed
to get out a mellifluous rhythm
from a parrot's throat
to warble out the gems of a breezy life.

But together with dad
wrapped in the gospel of fruits
man must dish out to man,
we ran into a hurricane back home,

when a land rover
breathing in golden sun rays
regurgitated a tornado

of men who swooped him
with giant eagle claws,
whisking him to the vehicle's tailboard,

where, like a bull
held by the horns, he was towed
by iroko hands to sit
on the vehicle's floor, as soldiers
croaked out:

(iii)

"You're in chains now
getting ripe
like a tree's gold-hued fruit
for the hangman's rope

to crown you
with a garland - to leave you
bleeding into dust,
as sparrows trot on your slab".

And with that crucifixion
in the core
of a jungle by the platform of our house,

a river burst out,
flooding the banks of the doorway,

drenched the family still
wriggling out
of a hot hearth of wails and sobs,

in glistening waters
running down sun-baked cheeks
ballooned into a fat night.