Night Of Scissors And Shears Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

I roll and glide
on holes on my bed,
as it grows
into a saw-toothed
rock face,

but a foamy air
places its palms
on my back, rubs me
over and over,
as I ride
on tattered sleep,

my eyes hard as stones,

when moonlight
flung in through a tree's
drifting windows
scratches me

with sharp cream fingers
untrimmed
by blades of wind

in a breezy, windy night,
only scissors
and shears prattling
with each other through
swinging leaves.

(ii)

O choked ringing bells
of skipping crickets
on croaking
and hissing lawns,

life a jungle
of hunter green and jade
lawns igniting
a firestorm of voices,

scissors and shears
of a gale on steadily
cruising wheels,
the loudest tenor,

as a nightingale's
soft whistles

lay out a padded sheet
on lighter spidery
cloth, my beddings ripped
by rattling scissors

in the wind slowing down
to a breeze's
weak-voiced maracas
between intervals
of violin
steering singing gales,

as zephyrs blow
into flutes of night,
the swinging lap of mama
crooning me
to sleep in her river

drowning scissors and shears
now cutting off
dark hairs and feathers
of night, as a moon slims
down with my fat sleep

and rattling hands
on blades
fail to trim down my sleep
in thick dreadlocks,
shears still grinding,

as they cut down
thick hairs
on overgrown branches
and swinging twigs.