The Brightest Stars Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A deep black slab jumps out
of a million-year crater
and fluorescent spiders crawl
and brawl across.

Midgets of chrome
and winged crystals
from a sun's corona cough out
rings and wings of light,

break on marbled floor
breathing out sparks
and silver dust whimpering.

and a blacksmith's wreathe
of sailing wobbling
red-powdered dots of wheezing air

flickering with red
expanding wings over
swooshing bellows,

singing the song of birds
diving out of a dust bath.

The knob and handle
winding and spinning

a crowned sky of thought
bakes cold hearths
to fly out with little birds of stars.

(ii)

Not from the sky shall
one star jump

at your balls of eyes
and zoomed-in moons
rolling through punches

from a fluorescing star
and a pore bouncing off the skin
of a deep shadow night
covering shallow lakes of a mist.

From a light's coverup
explodes glass and bottle crystals
amid pulverized stars,

flying to angles that never
jump back down from sky to earth.

(iii)

Not a screen of fireflies,
pixels growing tall flowers
from burst-out
television and movie screens
planted in the sky -

in the mulch of dancing eyes
cutting angles

and tailoring flames
into sharp flickering threads
of lightning,
red-beaked birds nibbling off
the chest of a rainbow.

(iv)

The brightest stars jump
out of closed eyes,
a bravado swimming

in the brightest stars of a wink
tossed off from
the cutting jump, a comet

breathing out stars seen
only when eyes are closed.