Jumping Down Into Floss Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Jumping Down Into Floss
(i)

I've carried a ball and rock
of burning sun
on my shredded head,

as I dig into the mulch
of grief, these feathers

and ashes of old sheets
of paper tethered
to a braying wind,
a man carrying a donkey's load
and feathers of ripped letters.

Written in red ink
from deep holes on a shore
flying doves to land
on brown lids of earth.

(ii)

I've sipped tails of drips
too touched to swallow
chains of coals from a glowing hearth
sinking to stick
in a bowl of memories

quaking with thunder's
drifting crackle,
my memory in shards
of sepia crawling across dusk's sky.

As dawn trots and gallops
to a halt at the edge
of a bleeding horizon,

where red hibiscus
and tulips
crawl across an abandoned body.

And a dying breeze
flips over itself
up on a rising slope.

(iii)

And there's little time
to light up
a wing-flapping flame
on a candle's quivering mouth

murmuring and whispering
with a sky-eyed dove.

Where ‘s my mole hole
into the deep sky
of my hurricane-lifted bed,

when I'm yet to rise
from a smoldering crater
gripping me with a red crab's hands
like ripe ash on embers,

these feathers and wings
flying me into a bowl
of my sprayed and splayed self,

as I jump down
from a mountain into a bed
too narrow to carry
my wind-sprayed arms of grief

tuned to the darkening
sky of my bed, that ruby silk
wrapping me up

in this shredded cocoon of my bed,
where sun still shines
ringing into the tapered depth
of a cone clinging like goo,

and I slowly crawl into sleep,
a cotton-bandaged silkworm.