Light I Don't See Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Dust splashes
into a cloud.

I slim down
into a razor-lipped
bayonet

to slash the world
into an oval moon.

Out of my unhatched egg,
a light I don't see,
only flowers of a yolk bounce

over a plenum
of rolling moons
in ash,
its star a far-flung pneuma...

When it's too dark
to see a sea

beyond a stretching brow
under a pillow of sleep,

gold-skinned eyelids
roll down
a screen cleaving off

light from a daisy
patch in a god's eye.

(ii)

O Fiyinifi Laini,
O god
of showers of light,
I bow to your
comet of a flying shadow.

Under my dark
ceiling of sky, take me

to crackling fireworks,
an overflowing lake

carrying a storm
of stars split into sparks.

O dots and midgets
rallied into a schema
of night,
closed eyes seeing stars…

O blow them out
Into a typhoon of stars
In Apollo's eyes.

(iii)

In this narrow room
spinning a close chamber
of the Sahara Desert,

a nimbus blackout
from eyelids closed

and padlocked
with a slice of lightning

tosses me off
into the Orion Nebula

O crater
and deepening gorge
of melted stars.

(iv)

Take me further down
deep into the flame

of a schema
igniting the volcano

spilling magma into
a funneled sky
of red cardinals

burning
a thought into light.

Before the crucifix
of a silver-lit man,

O savior
I'm drowned in your shadow
of light spattered

to wallow
in the star-touching corridor
to me in my chunk
of soot, this crow-winged night…

(v)

O Apollo, sun in a star
sneezed out by a moon
on my bed's ceiling,
let me toss out

snow lamb by cotton sheep
under a cream sky

Beneath my brow
let me be the light

to carry me in the arches
of a soft-eyed ram

to clear my eyes for a trip
to the gods
of Orion Nebula

inside the palisade-confined
cubicle
of an exploding schema.