Landing Strip Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A door screams open,
letting in
a birdy gold guest
to roll on light wheels
on the sleeve

of my shirt burning
with flames of love,
springs in the feet
of a yellow flame

ignited on the landing
strip of the arm,
a wiggle the only
traffic controller guiding
love to its nest.

O arm grown into
a runway
on the trimmed tree branch
of a man's green shirt
with leaves greener
than a garden of Eden.

How the wing
of an arm sticking out
with a tree's twig,
spins life's steering
wheels to spray pollen
on the tree branch

of a man planted
deep into the cushion
of his mulched armrest
with no hearth for a seed
to grow out
of a cold ridge.

(ii)

But an arm ploughed by a tic
of fondling silence
to carry another flamy
monarch of a butterfly

landing on the shamrock
herbage of a shirt
carrying the taxying area
of a brighter

passenger, a blue morpho
with the eyes
of a matchstick burning
with the man's arm,

as the man is ground
into winged ashes
of an elastic sleep pulled
to its far-flung edges,

and stretched beyond
the palisaded
borders of an air strip,

the emerald shirt
of a man, his arm flipped
out in his sleeve

to carry another butterfly
clucking with silent
feet trotting with the legs
of a petalled flower,

a swallow tail gliding
on the arm of a sleeping man
turned runway,
a green leafy branch
for landing butterflies.