From Heat Into Heat Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Hydrangeas of sun
float and ooze
out of cerulean clouds.

They shower me
with red burning petals.

Fangs nibbling off
and chewing my skin
into a slippery pulp of mugginess

and itchy bumps
growing mountains on my skin.

With creased hot leaves
shaving me
with hearth-stropped razors.

(ii)

Heat creeps on me,
brushing me
with scorching butterfly wings
flapped and sprayed,

as the sun folds me up
with hot leafy hands.
And devours
me into its rolling oven.

How have mounted moments
Counted themselves out
like referees of seconds

chasing half-hours,
when light has escaped
into a deep hole.

And the world hangs
on a dot
in fast-flowing Neptune brewing
chunks of night.

(iii)

A stroll to a breezy shore still
hurls us to the breath
of shark-mouthed baking furnace,
hot air rushing to slap
our faces with a stickiness.

Pomading us to a beaming
smoothness of walking moons
in the sizzling rays of daylight.

In the bubbling corridor
everybody hangs over
a crater popping out with hiccoughs

of hot air and a silky heat
gluing us to sticky thick flannels
we've not worn, as we're drained out.

(iv)

After a hot meal of chili
that roasts us
from throat to pore, showering us

with warm drizzles down
our temples expanding cheeks,
we want to dive
into a walk-in cooler,

but fall on graphic photos
of blood flowing
from a river in West Africa
to the shores of Ocean City.

O tightly closed bubbling
cauldron of a world,
I crawl out of a flamy train tunnel
into slithering corridors of heat:

Unbolt your door to a star-lit sea
of gliding rippled waves,
no wrinkles on its face.