It's Still Dark Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Walk on broken bottles
chewing my soles
with the very mouths
that pulled me in
to drink from them,

when time wove
thick slithering bushes
and jungles no longer
covering me with taupe
dry leaves,

but whistling me out
with rosy flowers
lighting only dim candles
and lanterns.

Walk in all fields,
I wish I could,
when suns burn cheeks

and winter's cold brows
freeze the mind
into stone.

(ii)

Let me walk on gorse
in a path of thorns.

O cactus, let my skin
be as thick as
your fleshy green jacket,

when I scream
for a sun's gold
cloak never seen over
my silky body,

but hanging on
by the river that croons
with me until
I stand like the stump
in its middle,

saying nothing, while
birds in the creeks
still whisper and squeak
amid squirrel squeals.

(ii)

It's still dark under
hot bright suns,
light blinding me

with blackboard screens
reading out no scribbles
to me, when grackles
in broad daylight
twinkle eyes of sky

that morph me
into a light by a volcano
spitting me out
from the deep gorge
of my sinking sofa.

Wait for no tide of light,
when every avenue
leads to a closed-in dome
of the night

that falls with a deep-sinking
pyramidal hat
I must wear,

even as I drown
in the river of my rocker
with no roots
in silt to anchor me.