Sketchers And Painters At Work Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(a painter's loop carving out a riot)

(i)

Legs ride arms,
Itchy fingers
crawling over
broken cheeks
stitching themselves

into grins
too bloated and stiff
to be etched
out of broken stones

of birdy men
and women
yet to fly out of storm

that flies them
over themselves
only to land
on the plastic hands
of waters

in streams and rivers
breathing in rainbows
from deep pits
of muzzles buzzing
out songs lighter

than a hoopoe's
curved trumpet
blasted with the wings
of a sketcher's eyes.

(ii)

And claws of brushes'
dry edges pierce
and scrape cardboards
of green lawns,

when finger nails scratch
a glob of red paint,

a man flipping out legs
and wings of arms
like a fat grasshopper

as another man
in a rioting crowd
rolls over ruby

stains of early dusk
falling on a painter's
fresco, a canvas

stretched out like a piece
of sea running out
of space for ripples
expanding into ellipses.

(iii)

Loops of arms,
ropes of punches
swung across

tree-growing trajectories
nobody can climb,
but only flip over

on a night of storm
and red ink
filling up an empty
pot of light,

a sketcher and a painter,
one man bawling
out to himself

for cream and lace paint
for the light
to send crawling crabs
of itchy hands back

to a creek clothed
in a heavy cloak of night
with glue binding
man to man in a sea of love.

(iv)

How cotton hands
of butterfly men weave
and stitch flying eagles
of punches pecking

at each other
in waves of rising legs
on looped arms

to settle soon after
on the high and low
tables of a snack bar

sipping a red spicy drink
following a feat
of sketching and painting,

each guest
a painter's rolling
and swirling brush.