Wings Of Hot Sun Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The sun spreads
hawk wings,
a screeching heat
pecking
at their temples.

Falling and bouncing
off their shoulders
like smoldering coals
rolling across bones

and ripples
of wrinkled flesh
folded up down
their sinking spines.

In the heat, they float
and flow along,
mewling with the cats
that bounce them
with snarling songs

under the cream
hot branches
of a sun
munching them
like hot buns,

as they're all
sprayed brown,
air taller than a cyan
and silver ladder

stretching up
to a spot
cutting off eye's journey.

(ii)

For how long
will the sun continue
to maul them
with its overgrown
finger nails of heat?

How many more
cream sheets
of flattened rays will wrap
them up
with giant wings of sky?

How many more nylon
alabaster hands
of sun's drapery will drop,
splashed on them?

The sun growls
and barks
down
and through their skulls,

their tethered
ground trotting dogs
of feet
on cobblestones

only yelping
with cracked voices.

(iii)

They walk tapping
their chapped soles
with the palms
of their floppies,

powdering air's pearl
lengthened face.

Dry-throated toads
croak under
plastic-shoed feet.

Under rubber-soled
boots
the skipping animals
of paced steps

howl and croak
across potholes
with mouths
of groaning lions.

Under the sprayed wings
of suns, cocks crow
from parched throats,

lumps of sputum
and rivers of spittle
jumping out mouths
like a geyser's flow.

Landing only on dust
to churn clay
jumping to stick on soles
too heavy to lift
with dying life
in numb stony feet.