Hill Flips Over On A Highway Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(based on a true incident in Minneapolis) .

(i)

A hill of conscience collapses,
and flips over on a highway
leading to a castle
of flames without chimney.

Without smoke outlets
from officers carrying tons
of ice blocks
in deep bags inside their hearts' bowls.

A choked man now a chirping bird
blurts out like a spear of wind
shot out from a wheezing balloon's mouth:

"I can't breathe O I can't breathe".

Wrapped by a storm of storms,
a doubled calico wrath

thickened into a policeman's
leathered foot,
a boot lands on man's neck,

lands again and again,
the lying man growing into a log.

(ii)

Amid thunderclaps and an explosion
of hurled and catapulted calls
for the landing foot

to stop its uphill ride on a log
with no nose, no limb, no crawling ant,
no cotton speck

nor afterfeather of a gesture,
no pump on a chest
losing steam and beam,

nor life's wind we all ride
breathing on a smooth road,

a footslogging ambulance
swerves by with light-handed
feathered hands

to lift the log into a sarcophagus,
the only bloated dove,
whose low humming voice
is stifled by the man's death.

(iii)

We've yet to climb
a hill of conscience, trotting slowly
up to its crown,
where death rises
to our brows with wings

to be flapped
as we cascade back on horseback
down a cutting corner
heaving brittle threads
into the shreds
that flip us into a deep gorge.