Glue Of Brotherly Love Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Better drizzle than pull
hot waters out of poached eyes
when times are harder

than rock - stiffer and stiffer
than a snake-crowned pylon
sending hissing messages
down to climbers.

With two legs and two arms,
when neither has both,
leaving the world to spin
on one leg.

And wave at each other
with wings flying
from their eyes, as one of them
saw his arms chopped off
by a smile-riding BIR soldier.

(ii)

In life's windy drizzles,
the two boys look at each other,
their teeth little stars
brightening daylight
into Sirius with a thousand eyes.

Each eye planted
in the stroking gaze of one
at the other rolls off
like a woolen yarn,

the soft bouncing ball
knitting them into
stretched threads stitching
sprinkled stars into dawn's
burning flowers,

when a pink hue waves flags
of love more than
a bee's buzz over the fire
of billowing ribbons of petals
in the garden of this unclothed street,

drizzles too weak to cut off
a flowing plenum of stars
linking them, as they row a common boat,
walking back home

under drizzles that fall off
the duck back of their faces
brewing smiles and grins
attired in the gloss and floss of glue
keeping gazes stuck like goo,

steering the river pulling
along the two boys
down the pebbled and potholed
path of life gluing them.

(iii)

The one-legged, two-handed boy
tosses a palmate
banana leaf over the shoulderless
and armless lad,

both flaming with a fire
from their teeth,

the only stars the sky spins brightest
in a night of two amputated
lads letting no night
settle over their heads lighter
than balloons in a birdy sky of love.