Octopus Tentacles Of Fear Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Do not spin
in the shadows
of featherless
crow tails

shrinking into feathery
and ashy dust

in a widening cave's
mouth yawning
with hippo teeth,

as claws grip
you with an umbra's clothing,
the penumbra
a shark's mouth,

when you stand chilled
and flung out
of a crooning river.

And spiraling fibers
of taupe clouds
are woven into
a goldenrod swelling mound
of a mane's fur,

when brown
hairy locks of grass
hold their heads
high and bark out:


(ii)

Was that a light
wind wearing
a leopard's flickering
curling whiskers?

Was that a dropping
boulder from
from a wind-blown
grain of sand?

Did a hair's tail
in a zephyr brush
and stroke you,

as you jumped
into a ravine, dodging
the shadow

of an elephant,
its only trumpet
a long-tailed gale breaking

its voice into a snake's hiss
under a pillow
fondling you through

a night of rainstorm
flushing sludge
into a river crooning
under your sleep?

(iii)

Icy tentacles
of an octopus
lit by the glowing shell fish
of dangling rays,

stretched
and drawn out

by hairy breezes
of fear
blow and pump clouds

of a crater's night
into sunlit ears
stuck into the broad
wings of daylight rays,

when the thread
of a warbling breeze
strikes with a lion's fur.

(iv)

Flush yourself out
of a watery, icy
deep bag of fear,

when a shower
of morning sun light
swallows you

like a tornado of feathery
cream smoke
from a singing kettle

breathing in
a ton of heat

from a blacksmith
freewheeling
his hippo-mouthed bellows,

as a hearth's coals glow
redder than
a volcano's mouth.