Shades Of Night Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Shades of night crowd
my room with feathery fingers
and large-rayed palms of light
from the mountains

and valleys of the day,
when I was ploughed
like a pebbled field in the desert

and lifted high by a laugh
that split out of a cocoon.

I was also sunk by a hammer
from a mouth that nailed
a soft banter
into my bleeding flesh of mood

with the stone-hard fist
of a slur that caught me,
scrapping off
an uppercut's sharp blade.

(ii)

The day was dark, all soot
from the fire
under bubbling mouths

hurling off a steam of arrows
to pierce my beak-proof
vest of mood, as hawks and eagles

pecked only at hard steel,
wing-flapping and flying off
into the woods.

While I walked
back home in the rays
of the path I'd mulched

with a spade that scooped out
mounds harboring
mice and moles eating
into a sunny temper

before I sprinkled loam
and dark soil
for a green harvest

from a flame-yellow day
that didn't roast me,

but left me in the embers
and ashes of burning fights.

(iii)

Dusk flows with sun.
Dusk roars with the winds
into early evening,

a full-cloaked night taking over,
as I look
into my ceiling
to find a lamp melting

out of its bright powder
into a frost hue
wearing a cloak of flint.

But my dim room
switches on a half-dead bulb
floating like a magnolia cusp,

a moon in my ceiling
I'd missed throughout my ride
in the jungle of daylight.