To A Biya Soldier Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Air grows cream
and sprays graphite wings
to hide beneath
a slab of cloud
the sun punches through

with crab-gripping jabs
and the striking lance
of running sunrays
that explodes a volcano.

Bloated and brewed
out of a thousand eyes,
the sun shoots
and fires its spinning rays

to scoop out detritus
from ditches that can't hide,
as dry maggots
pop up like gem crystals,

scales shining high
with a tide,
the spinning glittering sun
of those stabbed
or choked with boulder
to a flamy death,

when all stars have died,
leaving the sky
to a nebula of dahlia.

(ii)

Each sunray breathes
out a flashlight
to the golden fig
shot down by a gale
deep into earth's chamber.

The sun's an eye,
its lashes the corona
surrounding
the sun's pointed torch.

All shadows cast
by sun jump down
from standing trees

and electric poles
talking to you
about stained hands,

a choked martyr
breathing out
the last whirring zephyr,

as he dies
with no witness,

but the splashed sun,
and the muzzle
yielding
to a trigger's orders.

(iii)

When a shadow grows
stretchy behind
the tall silhouette of a tree,

the shadow is digging
into the eye
of you, lost soldier,

when you pull
out a mother
and screaming children,
shoot them,

and lurk to hide behind
a stretchy shadow
etched on rocky earth

drinking sun's eye
beneath
your bleeding feet.
stretchier than
its mile-distant phalanges.