Fulcrum Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

What storm
spins
from this joist,
my elbows
having grown

by a girder
with little
standing spine,

a weevilled
beam in ashes.

I live walled
and boxed in
by a drifting house
of storm,

built of bricks
from the tail
of a typhoon's clay.

(ii)

Where will
I stand, clung
to the axis
that plants me,

while
the world
rolls on,

its far-flung
trip
stretching

a merry-
go-round
along edges
of me

watering
and mulching
feathers
without a wing.

No pilot steering
from the fulcrum,
as I fly,

an albatross
with a snipe's
wings over

the cutting ocean
waters
drowning me.

(iii)

Let me cling
to a boulder-sized
whale
in this speck
of me,

a flooded house
jerkily tilting
to its toes,

only heavy air
gripping me
like barnacles
I cannot carry.

The sun's
edges barely
brush me,

although sun
rays pour
with a biting catch
scorching me.

(iv)

Planted only
into
my own tornado
spiraling
and churning
me like a tomato
blender,

I eat mountains
and sip their
dew dressing me
up, when
thick-layered snow
sticks to me,

clothes me
in daisies
not warming me up.

Under no surgeon's
needle,
I wander
in a desert within
my davenport,

but find no pole
to grab,
and climb to its top
to hoist my flag,

as I fly, full-winged,
at half mast,
my hull and chassis
having lost
their gripping claws,

as I stand
on gossamer
threads of air,
no fulcrum.