The Trench Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for Ambazonian children buried in mass graves)

(i)

O sepia stains, breathe out
storm from mangled
bodies. In shallow beds snore
on with rumbling winds.

Room of earth, room of sky,
cubicle housing bones
droning over themselves,

as moments hiss
and whir and rumble
with a dropping cloud

hanging lower and lower
over a sinking perch,
a fire of hand-spinning flowers
on a floating bed.

(ii)

On a sinking bed O flame-lifted
sighs in their highs
on a tight-lipped pyre
burning nothing, leaving sun
to stroke and brush in love

howling and growling
with snarling the snarling cats
of a wind, galloping
with whines trailing tails.

O bone-broken strings,
these silver-threaded faces of wind
on short spotted
crawls of crass weeds sitting

on green spills spinning
on hundred-legged stools of silence
trapped in whiffs
of green flames, life still creeping.

(iii)

Growing with wild grass
standing with thin candle tongues
of pinnate green blades

sobbing and sneezing out flames
of dwarfed red flowers

sticking out their necks over
creeping crinkling grass
showing more love for departed gems
in warm shafts

with a firmer grip on creases
flying above,
these blazing red flowers,

from which a robin flies out
of a tight pipe's choke
underneath tightened fists of earth.

In a stretched whimper,
fly - O fly to the moon
in this tide of night rolling on

and on with ant legs
on eye- and ear-paved floors,

only feet from the head
stamping and trudging on them.

(iv)

They're molded out of earth
and thinned out
into moth silence spinning

ash and beige afterfeathers -
O sliced cotton specks.

O breeze, whisper
a song bird's hymn
into my ears in the flames
of rolled-off eyes

stretching cream flags
of death, when burnt breath
is sipped by jumping air.

In their maroon and carmine shells,
life spins under earth mounds
singing behind vermilion windows

letting out nothing but smoke
and fog, as pieces of mist
stitch and fold themselves up
into feathers of mumbling finches.