Quiet Shadows Scream

By Felix Bongjoh

A people with the common identity of belonging to Southern Cameroon (Ambazonia) are at the brink of annihilation by the dictatorial regime of La Republique du Cameroun. This book of poetry primarily deals with the torture and death suffered by the Ambazonian people. With a prologue about the cliff at which the people now dangle and struggle and an epilogue about the people’s resolve to resist any subjugation, the book also offers, as usual, poems about life and death in general, but it focuses primarily on the intense torture and brutal murder suffered by Ambazonians in their struggle for independence from a neighboring country of equal status. Most of the poems dwell on the physical and psychological suffering of a people resisting subjugation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781490794990

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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Copyright 2019 Felix Bongjoh.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9500-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9499-0 (e)

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.

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.

Trafford rev. 04/30/2019

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

Contents

Prologue

Bunches of somber bouquets

Shadows on meadows

Breakfast after a crimson spree

A torture tail’s tale

Silhouette

Spiders

Words of a departing young man

Crozier or tree

Caterpillar

Blood paste and mud

Moon fetchers

Mangled hand

Spherical

Regret

A way forward

Machete morning

As if all rolls along

Larger than the mind

The grave

One of them

Cushions between bodies

Just before the burial

The giant wound

Seedling in the storm

Baobab trees in the storm

Storm and fate

Boom and bang

Brown clouds and coal night

Groaning storms of life

Your best friend

Her worst enemy

A river and its invisible hand

Waiting by a large garage

Fighting back

Follow the petrels

Protected by forest kings

The sermon

Mineshaft of forest rain

A long bridge of potholes

Watershed by a desert’s edge

A cloud

The shape of truth

Streets on the head

Where’s mum gone?

Bugs of a busy morning

A knight’s castle

Flamed arrow

Albatross

Narrow lanes

Epilogue

The knoll

The long short road

Prologue

Bunches of somber bouquets

(i)

A mountain collapses

A broken shore relapses,

Door through apses,

To sacred blood

At our feet

As rhinos rush and shove

With elephant trunks

And find guise

Of torn mice

On stretches of flesh

Home on far shore

Muzzle-eyed eagles have

Tasted red milk

Dropped by one big ray

Showering

With glowing light on

Earth canvass

Where night-eyed soldiers

Each on frail paws

Boots their own heads

As they stand on their heads

And sit on leaf feet

Heavy with claws triggering canons

Of kicks and butts

Ploughing through earth

Muddy with blood.

(ii)

At crater’s edge

A young man a young lamb

Kicked

From boot to boot

And butted with Goliath’s hand:

Has lightning slashed sun,

A deep hole dug

Into death, the only depth

Shining with a red

Bleeding mouth

Red bleeding chest?

How does a cloud bark

With thunder

And sketch trembling zigzags

In one light-fed cut

Across the sky, the same cruel

Surgeries performed

By straight bullets with shark-toothed

Mouths wriggling in

With nails, a rhino tooth broken

Merely scrubbing flesh

A red bleeding cry

And other bleeding cries diminishing

Into rattles

A nightingale intones

The bells of dying

As blood drops

In ringing intervals and red streams

Flow into flooded rivers.

A hippo on a BIR soldier’s chest

Relishes fireflares

In flying bunches of burning flowers

From which wounds snatch

New colors

From red gardens, where BIR

Soldiers tie

More bunches of bouquets

For a feast of blood, last rattles

The chorus of a monotonous threnody.

Shadows on meadows

(i)

Shadows on meadows

O these widows

And children among shriveled willows

By long broken shadows from windows

Dangling: We’re all snaky ferns

Of ourselves, we’re all creeping

With sheep, and terns

Flying over red seas - and drifting

We’ve been quiet shadows, hearts singing

When bleating bleeding life is burning,

The surviving lone cow still mooing

As it toboggans through with sides creeping

Along the bowing rolling ferns

We’ve been the hiding trenches

The thirst a baboon soldier quenches

With long arms to mangle.

With short arms to make us dangle

And drop with a strange sigh,

When retreating skies are too high

And muzzles speak only with dead people

As sighing arcs wheeple,

Like warblers and curlews sailing home

When trenches our only dome

Built by ditches soldiers dig into flesh,

Every septic feeling fresh.

(ii)

Fresher than water we cannot drink,

For blood rivers aren’t ready to shrink.

We’re still shadows of ourselves

On meadows, leopards serving themselves

On nests of eggs hatched to burn

Down bungalows of conscience we earn.

When BIR soldiers fly from rocks,

Jump out from docks

Of strayed conscience never to burn

As vultures by blood each wait for a turn

As flames approach, den guns still to learn:

For whirlpools of desire

Often turn into a deluge

Of fears fueling only fire

In which we cannot take refuge.

But there’s no better home

Than the shell-enclosed spirit of a dome

The everlasting welwitschia’s straps

Where the tardigrade’s eternal wit unwraps.

Breakfast after a crimson spree

(i)

At the foot of a cliff,

The sun slashes itself

Into crumbs,

And muddy pastes

We can still eat,

Our wooden mouths

Numb like sealed prisoners’

On a hunger strike,

On tree tops, while their hearts

Bleat and bleed and beat

Only in an abyss

Below a tree’s roots

Planted