Silt Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

My sharp-nailed fingers pinch
and leave slits in a thickening silt,
my ride having stopped over on
a level mound flattening

into ground grains deepening roots
into sleep, flipping out branches into air,
their leaves and flowers edges
of sky-white sheets stroking me.

I'm silt sleeping on my broken
bed drifting back and forth
on a rock of tiredness, this mass

of a dude, limbs ground
to a pulp, head in the wings of a cloud.

(ii)

Cedar-hued silt sleeps stiff
on its bed stretching arms,
a sea weaving sands to stitch
lumps of dust into fibers

of plankton, when grass grows
on a bed of bicycle-riding
legs dodging undercurrents

of slapping waves, small
pillows wrapping you up with tiny
fingers of lose threads and shreds.

Time is shredded too into
soft silt, every space a mattress's foam
floating on a sea foam and spume
of rest and low warbling snores

under thousands of silver birds
of sprayed and splayed waves
on a butcher's table, jumping axes

of surged waters cutting a chunk of sea
and layers of fibrous flows

into slices and scraps of water
running to shore through the broken
banks of a pillow falling back
from the spine of a rising wave.

(iii)

How have moments in time's
windmill screamed in creamy waters.

They've ground stony grains
to play with sand and gravel,
as a snoring mouth and nose spills

off sheets of powdery air
to cover him with a lighter white blanket,

a sheathe of starry comforter
from a shifting sky of lace sheets
talking to the sleeping iroko log
of wood under collapsed walls of water.

I'm silt under drifting tables
of water rising high into the bottom
of a ship in a cloud's dress

bawling at me with the voice of thunder
rising from a gorge's abyss.