Climbing Up To A Snore Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The last rays of the sun
drop into my room,
baking walls
to a gold glow, as the silver
beams of the day took me

through overcrowded streets
woven with folks bubbling
with wing-flapping birds flying
out of their gestures.

Within my baked walls glazed
with the evening's
yellowish afterglow,

I begin to scale up a steep
mountain of sleep
after a belching dinner
has wrapped me up

with digging fingers
and creeping brushing palms
that fail to shut up
my eyes with a bolted click,
and I flip
my eyes open again

at every sound and light
scratching wind,
as stones from my inner bowl
drop on me.

(ii)

With the twist of a whisper
that loses its voice
to the storm
and thunder that struck me
throughout the day,

as invective jumped out
of shoppers' mouths,
bells of trumpets throwing out
bangs and booms

few ears want to swallow
without writhing out
of a lurking viper's path.

It was a thorny day.
It was day of trees rising before
me for a pick-a-back climb.

When I limped out
of breath - and out of the steam
that carried me
like a leaf, as I landed back
at my door steps.

(iii)

Now it's time to sleep,
but the mountain of a climb
stretching its bumpy back at me
all early night,
raises me to a high ridge,

against which I stumble
and fall flat on my pillow, a plain
that rides me through

the soft whistles and chanting
sobs of a river
that drives me into the gorge
of rumbling snores.

River, abandon me not.
Hold me tight in your gentle flow.

But a chokehold from a stretch
of snores hurls me
into showers of moon gripping me
with the creamy hands

tosses me onto my feet, as I walk
towards my moonlit desk
in the living room, as I fold myself up

in the flowery linen
of a creeping poem sending me
crashing in a free fall
on a sheet of paper as blank as moon.