Three Modes Thru Night Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

I've been
rolling over
my bed
in a swirling
forest

of swung tree
branches
of my bed,
my sheets
ripped
and flung
to the floor,

as the wind
blows
and howls
and whines,

a gale
whinnying
through
dim tree
branches
and
tottering stems,

breaking neck
and waist.

(ii)

Puffs growl
and dogs
bark in the air

pushed up
and shot
to sky by an
undercurrent

raking
grasses and
breaking twigs,

brushing
my window
banged
and bashed

by whistling
eddies
of wind-flung
leaves.

Shall I land
in my station
of snoring
sleep, or wriggle

throughout
tentacled
windy
hands of night?

(iii)

In the depths
of a gorge,
a wind
sinking me
deep
in an aircraft's
buckled seat,

I fly
to gates
still distant
from
doors of dawn,

night still
charcoal
rolling to onyx,

burning
and grinding
me into
glowing sleep

cleaved
and chopped
by another
spate of puffs

wrapping me
up in the arms
of a hooting
train until slowdown.

(iv)

I get off
a howling station,
a singing
groaning storm

hurling
me onto the back
of a braying
and neighing
horse

galloping
with me
in the swaying
saddle
of my bed

no longer
smoothly laid
out,
but a rocky
mattress

tossing me
up and down
until arrows
of sun
pierce my
window pane,

as I rise
to my carpeted
marbled
floor, chewed
and swallowed

by three
transport modes
of plane,
train
and sun-pulled
horseback

on a whinnying
morning
of a thousand
stars

spun
by feathers
and wings
of daylight.