Traffic In Streets And Bars Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In the street, traffic hisses and freezes
into wounded millipedes and centipedes,
roaches taking the lead
behind chameleons of curved-heads
walking in sacks of sorrows.

Tramping with shifting podgy-legged
logs, taupe men roll.
Crow men spin in bawling balls, swing
with spiders' tentacles of sprayed preyed legs
walking in snares of cloud-stitched daylight;

stretch out into wheeled cylinders
dressed in bulinga barks. Drawn in and in
into tight muscles of iroko
and tali feet fed by nerves hugging each other.

(ii)

O trees of elephant-lifting wrestlers
bearing clouds and weaves of leaves, fingers
forked into vees of vampire bats

whistling about the man
drowning in rivers and lakes of his blood.
Lying deep beneath his red shadow.

Deep down a trench of crawling ants
and roller-skating weevils.
And silhouettes sipped by clay and dust.

They sloth and crawl on themselves,
spin thighs borne by bird-fluted
and fizzed-out sighs, swallowed grumbles
rumbling in their heads.

They carry croaking frogs
of skipping thoughts with praying mantis legs,
bathe in the sludge
of times trailed through trash dumps,

worms in night goggles
peeking wounds of the world, licking blood drops
trailed by a khaki man's boots
tapping earless leather of dumped earth and hearth.

(iii)

In the bars traffic cruises and wheezes
into fleeting singing mosquitoes
landing in the ear,
unpaved strips running into ravines, messages lost
in the deep gorges of juke boxes.

Through dodgy lanes of dirge
and parroted sermons
of sword-tussling tossed empathy
about those who have melted
into the cloudy corridors, stars flying in Neptune,
as the past hangs on collapsing
spars, sails in bloated ships walking with elephant legs.

Wallowing through oceans of drowned minds,
the only tycoon a man wearing a mane
and teeth, each a boulder's bulge and barking rock,
a visitor tagged with a mocking bird's lyric,
scrolled verses of the corona virus
in the chirping croaking bells and gongs of dawn.