Broken Gloss of Bliss

By Felix Bongjoh

The collection of poetry is centered on a fathers nostalgic feelings about a beloved departed daughter, whose death occurred in peculiar circumstances, primarily attributable to a psychosis to which she fell victim. After languishing for a very long time, she suddenly passed away while still in its throes. The expression of deep feelings of compassion and empathy enables the poet to bring into play imagery compatible with the paternal and filial love that characterizes an exceedingly warm father-daughter relationship. Although the young daughters short-lived life is broken by the cruel hands of death, her gloss, as reflected in her cheerful and blissful moods, prevails throughout with the strong sense of melancholy and eternal life aroused by the verse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546293750

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 06/20/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9376-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9375-0 (e)

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

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

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.

This book is dedicated to my beloved departed daughter,

Agnes Josiane Bongjoh.

Contents

Gloss

Broken Gloss of Bliss

A Portrait of Mirth

Drain Me Out

Raise My Head

Tumbling Walls

Vulnerable

Smiles of Bliss

Absent Eyes of Light

Waiting and Longing

Paternal Magnet

A Bunch of Daisies

The Sun Asserts Itself

Grim Shadows of Mirth

Sun In The Dust

Gold in Smiles

No True Gold

I’m So Bare In Your Brilliance

Angelic Smiles

An Intimate Touch

A Splendid Gaze

Magnolia

Macramé

Shipwreck

Custodian

Pieces of My Heart

Journey

A Hunter’s Diary

An All-Time Victory

Pool and Desert

Severe Tone of A Calm Day

A Bird At Your Window

The Castle Stands Tall

A Castle In A Tree

Searching For The Sun

Loneliness

Guilt and Ignorance

Apology

The Tailor

A Slice of Silence

Gloss of Golden Bliss*

Preface

Gloss

(i)

Two blunt star-bound fishermen

Paddling their dazed canoes

On a bright glossy day,

Hurled bullets of slurs

At each other. As the bay in limbo

Re-echoed with flying bullets

In the mortified village of zeal

With a harsh, steamed boom

Of freaky, awry grenades

In a prompt well-baked veto,

Oozing out from idle mouths

With increasing venom, the two

Men held out their hands

In a feast of gentle kissing fists,

Knuckle touching knuckle,

To avoid a fierce rainstorm.

And release a patient’s buckle

With a well-dosed pamabrom.

A reconciled filtered tone,

Like the peace of fishermen -

The net in which rare fish

Are grabbed to sustain life’s extreme

Tails trailed behind sleepy bodies

Of a timid surrender tempering

The heavy demands of a certain compassion –

The net in its shabby naivety

Freaks out at me with love.

O Aphrodite with your unique dove,

Sail us through murky waters

To the island where a gemstone

Greets us with the warm hands of bliss.

(ii)

Gloss of a gem strengthened

By an internal gloss of compactness.

The gem holds itself together

When dropped from the skies.

Gloss of an egg in its uniqueness,

Lacking the veins that keep together

An internal bond nursing

Embryonic life unleashed into sin.

The gloss of a gem’s skin

Is never broken when dropped,

But that of an egg’s skin

Would, if it fell, unpropped.

In the invisible hands of providence’s

Jungle, each tree is involved in a bet

To determine the direction

In which a new river of life flows.

And when a chick survives

Out of the broken gloss, the bliss

Of birth is cheered by imposing trees

In the jungles of our own miseries

To make us stand firm, rooted

Into fertile beds that carry us like their trunks

Through the eternal flowers of a cloudy life.

Shattered but unbowed, we sail

Along creeks in the shelter of own trees,

Their shadow mellowing our brief silence.

(iii)

Gloss of a humble greeting in tears,

Stabbed silence in a stunned silk dress.

The nylon hand comes timidly too

With a watch that cheats the heart,

Postponing sunrise with a mid-night hug

To drop with a cascade’s stealthy sneeze.

A tired layer of clouds slips away

Into the bruised core of another day,

Contorting itself into a flower.

But its stamen oppresses the pistil

That carries it, flying posterity away,

To lose it by the cliff of a certain despair.

Breeding happy birds congregate

In a ravine’s craggy silence, stolen

From the decrypted echoes of rejection,

A fledgling, sunrise with the flaws

Of smiling clowns mounted on frowns.

Sleeves rolled down into the dainty

Warm hands of a secret, the squeezed

Space below harboring a hearth:

Between two outstretched pillows,

I sweat with the humid hands of love.

Gloss of a lake’s surface, a river’s too,

Above a sinking flannel cap caught,

Hiding the ripples of an oval grin -

Shining with the color of the shoes

That kicked away a piece of my love.

Unknowingly, with their foreflippers

Swimming away into a muted absence:

Forgotten centuries shy away

Like haunting night whispers suppressed by chirps

In the bowels of a tense jungle,

Where anxieties take root in stout silence,

On which we tramp with dirty feet.

Entangled in a broken heart, embroidered

With the lace of a durable kiss, the gates

Of a certain contrivance are now open

To