The City Sailed In Shallow Waters Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

My pocket is full of storm
and can burst out
of my cracking clinking chest
carrying keys to death's door,
barked a flame-decorated man.

I can make night sit
on them, shrieked the bumpy
traitor, who threatened
to flood air with a red-garnet river.

In its tight and tightened
strings, a hangman
just pulling and pulling in,

the city sailed in the storm
in low shallow waters,

as folks settled lying
on their backs
carrying flowers of wounds

above pools and potholes
on a stretched-out

elastic street pulling off
more latex strings weakening
into mantis limbs.

The folks are spurting out
from a wrecked ship
overrun by rivers from the sludge

and slimy moist of overripe fruits
hanging on tree branches
pulled down by a light breeze.

(ii)

I can fill barrels and drums
with thick rains of blood,
threatened the red-eyed guard,

whose gaze burst out with flames
into castles of growing clouds.

And after sea waves had bounced
off and pounded the banks,
floods of young men and women
poured into lengthening streets.

They trudged and wobbled to count
how many flowers
of wounds were laid in culverts

and foot paths, where ribbons of bruises
floated over death like fire gingers
and finches dressed in the helices
of a drifting flying sun to run
on the road that never ends with a cliff.