Office And Home Faces Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

I bounce out every day,
sometimes stumbling
on the stair case, padding
and nipping towards

my sobbing car, as I open
its door for a cruising
drive to the yawning office,

still empty, as co-workers
begin to drop in one
by one and in paired clusters,
lovers walking hand
in hand, hand around waists
or across shoulders.

And I swim within myself,
trying to figure out
what a world of men
and women on isles of their own.

What a world of folks
in overcrowded forests
of their kind, arms
stretched out,

hand clasping hand,
faces turned down
to their wooden rocky desks

as if buried in orisons
muttered too quietly
to themselves to be heard
by sneaky eyes or ears.

(ii)

But I bow to my computer
screen to have my eyes
take a dive into a floating
watery drifting screen.

All day I swim, body dry,
only my eyes doing
the butterfly stroke across
pages flowing with me

through a river of pixels
across a hue of flowers
stroking me
with the quiet buzz

and whirr of bees
stinging me
without touching me,
as they roll
across the screen.

But I'm lonely in an office
crowded with women
or prowling
for a notebook
or a cell phone misplaced,
a bracelet part missing,

or a necklace dropped
into a deep barrel of air,
hands swung over me,
as my eyes swim deep
in a cyan r goldenrod screen.

(iii)

At the end of the working
day, I fly out back
into my car,
cutting off links with office
wall pictures,

darted glances
and slithering smiles
unplugged
from wall faces
that follow me home.

At a home that spun
loneliness, when
I left in the morning, I dive
into an overcrowded

living room full of men
and women, who lurched
into my hippocampus
all day in the office.

Now at home,
they sit close to me
in my davenport,
the same old
folks I pouted at,

saying nothing to them
throughout
a sneaky day that flew
sneakily through
like a preened needletail.