Slow In The Storm Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

What flower
on an unpowered tower
raises him through
a storm-twisted bar

to the deck
sitting on hanging piers,
sighing
on bird-riding cables?

What stormy glower
from sky's eye
shoots a ray longer than
the tail
of a magpie shrike?

(ii)

What showers trower
the dim silhouette
of an inflamed crowned eagle
spinning the helices of thickly
feathered wings?

As it waits
and breaks no spine
for raining
drops of blood

from a tree branch's suspenders
in a tube-mouthed storm?

Sinking with a little chick
grinding
and cutting air
with rattled squeaks,

a wind hopping out
of the throat of a dying baby zebra?

(iii)

Still piloting traffic
on its striped back, a thousand and one
pedestrians crossing,

a million and one
giraffe-legged
Brobdingnagians
crawling
on all clawed seven limbs,

head and hands
and knuckles
and feet's nailed nails
breeding new wheels
to snail along with chameleons?

As they break the eroded bones
of a thinly coated street
to meet death at a dead end,
where green lights
plough schoolchildren through red?

(iv)

On a street's clean-shaven head,
what breaking anchorage
in the valley
crouched down on its shadow,

where arrays
of limping ants,

men armed with snake alms
telescope and peek
at life from Pluto,
fireflies singing through,

mane-muzzled rifles
laid to wrestle
in shallow graves
exploding

with the bang
of a quiet shrimp
stifling a blue whale's
laughing fart,

as flowers still belch out
sitting aroma and perfume
from leaves
dead
in thick tuxedos of muck
from own breath?

© 36 minutes ago, Felix Bongjoh