Laughing Wound Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Morning drops on me
like a musical node,
curved legs and arms
of cream shadows,

as sunlight sketches itself
with a burning
match stitch close
to the oiled timber
to explode

into the glowing rolling tinder
of a daylight of memories
excavated from a hearth.

(ii)

Creeping silver light
falls with a slithering lizard,
dodgy and corners
and angles of a laughing
wound screaming out

to be closed and gauzed
with fingers of love,
columns of ochre streams
flowing with a regolith.

O old times filtered,
sifted and lifted into sunrays,
shed a bright sun's
feathers over the scratching
ted stone of a wound

by sediments of rocky crusts
growing flower mouths
to blow into needles
that make prickling cactus.

(iii)

O milky sap from flesh,
the best fruit to eat
out of a deep sinking wound,

as inner hats cover
and ward off rays of heat
to thrust back eyes of revenge,

when red spears dive
through with cutting shears
to trim scaly scars,
as time builds spreading

cobwebs to clothe
broken bones of love
from chilled fingers singeing
like heated pins.

(iv)

Like a grater on thin skin,
a wound left
to burst into ashes
of dry scales
with no clean bandage of love

grows back crawling
and deepening
like a stinging scorpion
gripping hard
when nothing is left,

but the gaping mouth
of a deep wide cave,
a spiraling breeze
and wind of a popped laugh

stifling a bubbling lid
of the cauldron
to explode into hot steam,
the cackle that burns
into flying egrets of flames.