Red Mud Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(to an Ambazonian freedom fighter)


(i)

I grab your cherry rose
garment full of you
under a cream moon
in a bleeding dawn's kiss,

two elastic dolphins
arched nose to nose
after a boulder-hurled jump

from a swollen lump of water
rising from a pebbled slab.

I saw you rolled over
like a log onto a wave's deck,
the ship riding blankets
of waves to the shore of you,

as you clung on
to thin wires of a breath
holding you to your

pillar of you spun
and threaded and hemmed
into a your bouncing buddy

between pylons that grew
into trees starred with fruits.

(ii)

As you dived for fruits
on a tree branch
shredded by splashes of waves

that lifted you to a star
amid sparkles that gazed at you
with tarsier-eyed sparkles,

you plucked the cloud
of a storm that tossed you
down a slope

into the muddy crocodile's mouth
of a deep ravine.

(iii)

Bandaged and wrapped
in mud by gorilla hands of a storm,
I lifted you up from red mud,

as I leaned against
an embankment
full of animal dung and pastes
of our own blood

sticking to us like red khaki
starched and ironed stiff,
collars of garnet clart

full spit from punctured veins
holding us together

in horny joints poking each other
in a tussle of cattle rising
from a sticky trap filled with goo.

(iv)

In the breeze from shores
of our arrow-hurled winks,
here we swirl into riders
on horse backs of freedom,

galloping in sky-touching
heads we wear
like piked hats scraping ceilings
of sky and towers of sun.

Come on now, peel off those
barnacles of red scars
from your red face and pierce

the sun's trajectory
with a deep gaze shot
into the rattling barrel of you
striking the gong
of arched hugging dolphins in mid-air.