In A Condor's Wings Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

I lie down
croaking,
but sprawling
within

myself,
feathered
and winged

with airy hairs,
the grass
and midget leaves
of a condor's

gale arms
flapped
and spun

in my lounge
chair
stretched out

under
daylight's spray,
a crystal sun

landing
its bright wings
of piercing,
bell-mouthed
sprayed rays.

(ii)

As I trumpet them
to fly me
with a high-cruising
condor

through cotton
specks and splashes

and afterfeathers
of slimming clouds

over a tall
rocky mountain,

as I climb it, lying
like a flatfish
clothed in mud,

breathing in
only the soft
puffy baby hands
of clay and loam.

(iii)

Of course,
the young man
under
my mountain's

horny vines
and boots
of rock
melted and ebbed off

into the hands
of the tawny

and abalone
and khaki men

in sprayed tentacles
that hooked
him, a fish in a river's
flooded waters.

(iv)

What shall
I tell the young
man's mother

bathing
in a fire
of wriggling worms?

Tackle a roar
with a roar
and not the whimper

that sinks you
into a deep volcano

for a booming
explosion
when oval
pouting mouths

grab
membranophones
to chase off

lions
from a bowl
of memory in flames.