Switched On Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A dove has lost its voice
by the beach,
a hooting ship staggering
over burly waves.

A see-sawing canoe
jerking up the hill
of a breaking wave, a strayed
shark pouncing

and charging at a screen
of plashed waters raising flags
of large-handed
and kicking, poking waves.

The storm has been blowing
camwood into eyes.
O susurrus of a red stream.
Times are maroon.

Times are carmine, no whimper
without beads of blood
tying lips into stifled stone.

All chortles, pain winced off
by the edge of a cliff
on detritus from tortured
voices dragged to the shredded
edge of a thinned-out wave.

(ii)

Gone are elastic laughs
tearing mouths
to flower air
with tropes of flattery
to make a monarch's face

beam and pull a thousand suns
over a darkened crater.

Look down there. Faces
are dappled with smoke
and bandaged with stained hands.

Look down there. Bumblebee
waters rise to level
with scarlet streams across
bootless feet red with a bleeding sun.

The kingfisher has abandoned
sea, fishing in red sands
the broken voices of fleeing winds.

The shark has strayed
to a singing shore, jacanas
tiptoeing back to forts
hanging in leafy swaying air.

(iii)

Beyond palisades mapping
out footprints
of eagles dribbling past
their doubled and tripped shadows,

where suns fall, split
by lances of wind and axes
of hurricanes, the young men

swollen with triggers
to pop and cackle,
love is switched on
to fight for motherland.

Under arrows of rays
shot by a broken sun
in the bicycling storm,
the young men are switched on.

And squiggles of sparks
and fire in dawn's sky
cannot be switched off with one arm.