Pulling Over Sunny Blinds Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Let the flooding night spray
its canopy of soot beneath
my old cold stretchy blanket
cutting off a rolled-out row

with patches of crimson
and deep, deep cherry,
where a rainbow's border
ends sprinkling green grass

from the lawn a man slimmed
into a mantis when he was switched
out of life that stood by him.

It bounced on his narrow body,
little berry and crimson space left
by a crooning and roaring
scarlet river stitching itself

to the garnet dropping arms
of a screaming waterfall
grown from the loud sneeze
of a cloud arching to its bleeding soles,

a tall ray of light planted down
from a star's saw-edged face.

(ii)

And I drift off my silvery river
of sleep into a slithery stream
beginning a snore from a bubbling
throat playing drums on leathery air.

Brick, currant, rose streaming
down a world's sunken cheek in ripples
of sun-dried shadowy blood
waiting for a broom-carrying wind.

What spills off reddened sangria
on a broken sky's canvas, the painter
a man stroking a glowing body
with drizzles from eyes shooting out
crimson rays from a goring beak

with the soft brush of a gun
from the dun of a dawn with no bun
to feed a grunting hand
with bunches of magnolia snow.

(iii)

Out of the sheathes of smoke,
O hear me, this stretching river
brandishing hoses of blood

on a shore already too wet
with a flowing blush pulling out
Jonah from a fish's mouth on my way

to the sky of my bed,
where new suns are growing
over morning's rocking lap

singing to the red-eyed man
who's lost
an ambling elephant of will
to the daring crawling ant
by a hearth's glow

with cold soft coals wearing ashes
of embers, when a sky's fire
has not landed with the bonfire
that weaves and stitches hearts
into a knot from a smooth-flowing flower.