Chorus on a Bridge

By Felix Bongjoh

Based on a heavy dose of symbolism and metaphor, the poems reflect the ups and downs and the everyday experiences of life in general that make life worth living. Overall, they laud courage and perseverance and point to the trials and tribulations of life that must be overcome as if one were crossing from one bank of a difficult bridge to the other. The bridge is not necessarily a physical structure, although perceiving it as such enables the reader to interpret what the bridge could look like. The more important element, in a metaphorical sense, is what the reader may associate with the variety of experiences. Struggling to survive may lead to success or apparent failure, which spurs us to further effort either to devise better strategies or improve a preferred course of action. Whatever the result, it seems death is mans ultimate fate and should be experienced with the same equanimity as other setbacks and challenges of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546292869

Felix Bongjoh

Felix Bongjoh, currently living in Boston, Massachusetts, is an International Human Capital Development Consultant, who previously worked for an international organization for some 30 years. In addition to the present twenty-fifth book, Saddle On Thunder, Bongjoh has previously published 24 books of poetry, as follows: (i) Chorus on a Bridge; (ii) Broken Gloss of Bliss; (iii) Nightfall at Dawn; (iv) When Dusk Hoots; (v) Weeds of Jewelry; (vi) Season of Flowers; (vii) The Ineluctable Spin; (viii) Gloom’s Sprout of Love; (ix) Spectrum of Zephyrs; (x) Whistles in the Wind; (xi) The Sun Still Glitters; (xii) Cliff of Sirens; (xiii) Quiet Shadows Scream; (xiv) Angle of Angels; (xv) Sculpted Out of Sky; (xvi) Feathers of Fur; (xvii) Through Sundry Waves; (xviii) Beyond Dying Ripples; (xix) Doors to Eris; (xx) Outskirts of Inner Bowl; (xxi) Ebbing Out, Bouncing Back; (xxii) Tailored To The Stars; (xxiii) A Storm Wave’s Reach; and (xxiv) Isles Of Light.

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© 2018 felix Bongjoh. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/17/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9287-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9286-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

Chorus on a bridge

DIVERSE POEMS

Shoes yawn in dim light

Under the rubble

A stain in the heart

Blind eye of the sun

Vortex

The empty noose

Indifference

Cow hoofs

The world weighs down on me

Words like swords

Destroy the blight, not hope

Whosoever expresses himself

Roll out yourself

Sneak away at dawn

An urchin’s tears

Petals in my shadow

Myths spewed like exhaust fumes

Time chases us

Walls without windows

Nasty bugs

Night folds itself over

Bells in the sky

The snore of strings

The abandoned track

The broken pact

Testament

Where has my hair gone?

Showers flowing upwards

Teasel

Leave me in the dark

Shepherd

Pin-head arrow

Wailing brooms

The real

Close in

Blitz of the sun

Bullet Man

THE SEASONS

The pendulum

Cold palms of a winter night

At the edge of a precipice

Elasticity of time

As the seasons change

Warm hands of a summer night

My miserable shadow

Reflections

Anthills of glory

Endless path of time

The innocent lamb

Rolling bulk of disaster

Glow of our faith

CHANTS OF COMPASSION

Final clouds

Helmet of love

Not gone in a ball of flames

Stonewalls

The sudden absence

Seeds of guilt

Soldiers of our faith

NATURE ON THE HILLS

Along the hill path

Bobe Kumato

The blood of scarecrows

From milk teeth to dreams

Wounded mountain

YELLOW HANDS OF DOOM

No capitulation

Song of the bird in the belfry

The bird in the church roof

SONGS OF GRIEF

A veil of pain

Golden tears

An amazing flower

A sunny night

Sun over a heavy cloud

Boots in the rain

Green rivers of grief

Day never ends

Longing

Chorus of dawn

This book is dedicated to the memory of my beloved departed daughter, Agnes Josiane Bongjoh.

PREFACE

MARSH

(i)

Marsh on a stretched-out bank

has turned even softer,

flood waters setting in,

concocting the slime

filtering in sticky specks.

Invisible hands swallow

every stepping body into unknown depths.

I’m sunk so deep down the bog

up to my neck

only my head rises

above the ground.

Am I now a sullen stump

against which a careless foot

will always stumble and fall?

No, no, no. I will pump up

my spirits from within

with my last breathe and nerve

beneath my stunted head

until I’m tossed out swathe-free

from my dense prison

into a hyped-up balloon of hope.

I trudge on sludge in the mist,

squeezed in by the thorny undergrowth

of unfounded fears. Sinking again

in the swamp, my spirits

still rise to the leafy heights

of giant craggy trees

touching the sky. Dwarfed in a jungle

of shadows undefined, the sun still shines

Over centipedes creeping with me.

The sun still shines over the slugs

dragging themselves along,

the sloth closing in.

The woodcock behind the cruising crow

uses not only its wings to fly

but the imperative urge of distance

which strikes the heart like a storm.

Since my hopes are propelled

by the storm that rages in me

there’s nothing else to fear. Since the sloth

and the slug will keep on

pulling themselves along,

they’ll reach Sedna even before I do.

The slug too rages in me,

for it will weather the storm,

sticking sneakily to the marshy part

of a quadcopter – and stare

at me with the vigilance of a squid.

(ii)

Marsh like night pulls me down, drives me in

With a bulldozer’s force;

Night like marsh folds me up into a dot of standstill.

I’ve got some winged inspiration

From a B-52 with an eagle’s heart, nerves made

Of a drumbeat, nights cascading into days

When thunder warns from a lion’s glare.

At the surge of a temper driven

By a mere grasshopper’s skip on silky legs

Everything flips over, their vulnerable tails

Fleeing in front of their own heads.

Without my stratofortress neuron buttressed

By a wedge, the heavy size of a gargoyled might,

Propped up by a wasp’s sting of conviction,

I’ll never rise to a flash-cruising oracle, its invincible switch

Turned on with a blink of the eye.

To propel an X-15, a wheezing arrow, to tear through nights,

Through the mysteries of God’s trick of distance:

The muddy path I must take to jump-start an ambition

As timid as a bat caught in a shower of light.

From mud I emerge, a moon killed in cold blood

By an accelerated daylight widening its eyes;

From mud of age I emerge, my years lined up

Behind me, a stretcher of bruises and fractures.

From light I’ll dive into the brutal nights of fear and awe

To unleash the force of flashlights shot into the depths

Of marsh, neither dense earth nor transparent water,

To an undiscovered mineshaft of gems:

The wings that will propel me even further to crowned heights

With an owl’s extravagant eyes of wisdom.

Nights run into unpredictable days in gowns of murky clouds,

As an awaited dusk colors a complacent temper with flowers,

Which I dare not use to build a crown,

When there is still more marsh in view, more wasps

To sting an idea before it learns to crawl and waddle

And fly to puncture the secrets of another night -

Which no telescope can penetrate until

I’m cleansed of marsh waters and sludge brimming

With the slowness of heavily tased slugs in their own stickiness

And learn to see everything with the eyes of a blind man.

(iii)

I am blind, I am blind from a bland diet of gadgets,

From uncombed ideas which do not fold out

Into a safe sturdy bridge of trusses and beams

On which I must join the chanting crowd.

The deck dangles below my trembling feet

Reeling backwards from cobblestones of uncertainty:

Where are the scouts I’ve tentacled out to forewarn

Me of dangerous road scars dented into ditches?

Led by a starved star with only enough light

For colorful boastful canaries swimming in their swagger

Of trumpeted pride, I’ll take a goggled look

At the bridge’s tailless end to ensure no nimbus

Hangs over lines of fate-bludgeoned people,

No spark hides in the veins of its deceitful deck

To betray the people’s trust with a nervous breakdown:

Remember what happened to Scotland’s Stirling bridge;

Remember what happened to MyaungMya in Myanmar:

Those ill-fated stars that still grow devils’ horns

Haunt us like an unconscious piece of slang spurting

Out of our cave-open mouths. But slang alone,

Like a lion’s loose paws and no fangs to deal a blow,

Is what makes a bridge even more frail

Across the flat arms of a marsh slithering through shrub,

Dreaded by shy yellow birds mindful of their peace.

The day’s sky cloak retreats with uncertainty;

I feel the pace of fellow passengers on the bridge

Trailing along, guided by a muscular star.

Lifting me from a marsh where a bubbling anger flirts

With the disciplined temper of a motionless lake,

Haste with patience; and a thundered call to calm

Is folded into tired crumpled handkerchiefs

And sneezed out like accumulated mucus, all dumped

Into a trash can of an unfailing night, when, down the road,

Daylight reflected by a sheen, the tedious marsh

Of plastic confused minds with broad ambiguous chests,

Opens up its screen, a sudden sun in a drunken flamboyance

After the thick protracted eclipse of a grimace.

PROLOGUE

CHORUS ON A BRIDGE

The approach

Shepherd! O shepherd of our elusive destinies!

Take the uncanny track with its drooping

Lanky weed. Rows of cadenced shields approach.

Are they carrying sharpened tree heads,

Pointed pegs

Or hungry spears?

We will advance even on our own traces of blood

Against the floods that will never drown us.

Guide of crude hills on your heels,

Your flock, we will follow you through jagged rock

Through the dark passage with its inquisitive silence

Before the inrush from

Collapsing dams

Soaks your spirits

And your courage is laid out to waste in a stretch

On the tips of long iron blades grown by floundering grass.

Headhunter with only mice in your heart,

March me through the narrow opening -

Through the starburst in the overwhelming floods.

The fierce rays have penetrated

The waters

But not me.

Shall we dive into the flames of an imagined pit

Or march on with our spirits burning like flames?

II

The sun polishes the shrubs with a prolonged sheen

A touch of vermilion flashing out from the foliage

Emerald blended with jade green behind tan ears

Cyan and white screaming out vile years

In flowery display

They spy us with their mahogany eyes

Why are they so sunken in their funnel eyelids?

Ah! Horse with a saddle, where do you come from?

Where is your rider to guide us to the river bank?

O Shepherd! O Shepherd on a horseback!

We are out of a brief murk, showered by new lights of hope.

Guide us through the echoes of the swan and the whooper.

Their duet sweeter than the pitch

Of the red-winged blackbird

Plants a flag in the heart and waves a flame to rekindle love.

They lull the soul into faith in you in your selvedge gown.

You’re determined to ensure the edges of love are firmly knit.

Then, suddenly, Clangor and Color,

Why dwindle? Why yield to the myrtle

Of wild leaves invading our beige shirts? Why bow

To the smoky fragments

Of a dreamy space of silhouettes?

Here we stand

On the bank of an endless stretch of water

Where the bridge that links our souls begins a song of storm.

The stormy passage

I

A bang drowns our ears in the void,

Digs a dark grey crater into the sky,

Hiding the sun in an egg yolk

From which no chickens will rise.

Only floating masses of smoke thrive.

A neighboring cliff grabbed by the waist

Is tossed up and down

To dance