Time Never Ends Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The rumbling wheels
spoke all night. The train wagons
curved a snaky corner,

the snake thundering through shrieks
from slippery venom,

its tail of baked passengers
still regurgitated
by the bursting abdomen
of compartments without lungs.

(ii)

From a tunnel through
a rock-head, we knew we'd carried
a mountain on heads,

as ears crashed in a tunnel,
but did not split
into spirals of time, a crew

climbing down a hill's caboose
to the steering wheel
for a U-turn trip to the broken quay.

A missed train groaned off
through a stretch of ridges,
as we were spun
in coils of time bearing a billboard:

(iii)

The clock starts ticking
when wheels sink, no wings
to fly body to a lounge,
the crawling caterpillar a fly

and the tintinnabulation
of rushing feet with no hand
to wind back the cruising

falcon hand flying
with time's gossamer strings,
a waiting spider dead stone.