Moon Is Wax Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Moon is wax
spinning
on the mass
of a candle

melting off
pieces, these shadow
patches of night.

Moon spills wax
axed off
by a dark sailing cloud,

the world
an open deck
trailing a coin castle
of a ship.

Beaming wind drifts
sails of dripping
dim moments darkening

only to grow back
into flint mist,

the only crater bubbling
with smoky clouds
from deep bowls of memory.

(ii)

Night is tossed
on the tip
of a candle's flame,

a scarlet patch
the only tongue
spilling out bright melted
wax with silver leaves,

a fat tree trunk
sinking its roots
into a waxy bed

on a taupe earth's
expanding candle stand.

On which stars
have dropped
from the wings of a half-moon,

as I gather sparks
for a flame on a candle's tip,
the gold shrinking hill,

from which I climb down
to the wax
of a moony morning,

clouds of paper
on a tree-trunk drawer
waiting to be flipped over
and burnt
into the wax of a brain,

whose stem like a candle
spins on the mass
of an unwinged flame
spitting out smoke
from an unripe dawn.