Let Lipless Grasses Sleep Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for the victims of the Ngarbuh-Ntumbaw genocidal massacre in Ambazonia)


(i)

Float not over creeping weeds
and the twill weave of a field, heavy
clouds crawling and drawling

a song unsung. Whistled lances swing
and dig and dive through
chopped clay and flying wings of feathery pebbles.

Clouds of sand, hang on to your ceilings,
a desert of dredged heads ploughing
coughing land for unchipped tombstones.

Doves are clipped off, sheep bleating
in the ruby jungle growing midnight thorns
and claws. Leopards have rattled,

flying out of muzzles caving out crater mouths
for cold masonry along flower beds.

(ii)

Winds have lost their arms to low
branches of palm trees waving onyx ribbons.
Why is a graffiti of jade flowers
whistling over cairns standing over unbuilt tombs?

A sky bleeds, scarlet drops and patches
sprinkled across squiggles
and pits puffing out smoke, curls
hooking straightened-out curves,

as a wallowing transparent plastic paper steers
its wrecked ship to a standstill.
Swerves a train of croaking wagons
to a hillside of bodies rolled down
the dark hearth brewing dark and crow clouds.

How often do morning skies quake,
when crickets crawl and snail along fast-rolling wheels
and worms fly to the edges of cliffs?

In the tunnel, an owl hoots,
a train slamming brakes on carmine rails.

(iii)

Ceiling with no seamed edges,
you only swing from side to side and sigh.
Are your teeth not molars
on scissors for a bush bleeding with a haircut?

Pivot them, but bob not the blades
to slash sky into equal halves,

two elephants with gabbro skin, a ruby beast
bouncing back for a hammer's strike,
as a blacksmith's bleeding bellows
blow out the might red bougainvillea.

(iv)

But your scissors won't clip off
thick grass hiding a red bath,
choking knights of night
in a deep rose and red drifting crater.

Let lipless grasses lie on bruised spines,
sleeping under trampling feet.

O flocks of fire finches, spurt out
of a hopsack mat of grass, as crickets
jump out of basket weaves,

and mantises sprint on tall mahogany
and maroon screens, scarlet walls

rising to the bolted door yet to sneeze
and gape, arms stretched out, for soldiers of truth
to jump out to a shore of fluting doves.
Let lipless grasses sleep as skies will roar.