Beyond Dying Ripples

By Felix Bongjoh

The poems in Beyond Dying Ripples cover a kaleidoscope of themes. Most of them are implicitly or explicitly intended to make the reader see what is hidden behind ripples, especially on a river, where they expand for a while and disappear. The poems in general oscillate around diverse circumstances in life, nature, man’s condition in times of war; and facts of life, including love, happiness, beauty, melancholy and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781490796765

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.

Book preview

Beyond Dying Ripples

(i)

A gale blows

Through

Cascade yarns

And tin can knits

Of shrubs

Gleaming with

Green leaves;

Interwoven

And close-stitched

With pale reedy

And ropy debris

And tourists’

Fibrous waste.

(ii)

A loud-ripe fruit

From

A bowing tre

Pierces

With a thud

The babbling carpet

Of a still river

Flowing

No faster than

A chameleon’s crawl.

A borehole is sunk

Through water’s

Thin skin breeding quiet

Dancing circles:

(iii)

How far do these

Colorless silvery

And avocado worms

Crawl with the eye?

Bull-eyed circles

Of watery dart boards

Drift backward

And outward from

From each other

Until the eye grows

Into a dart itself,

No longer piercing

The bulls-eye

Of an apple tart

The river has

Snarfed down beyond

The eye’s reach.

(iv)

But the river itself

Is unfenced

And unpegged,

Boundless life ripples

Swelling a bullseye

A dart may miss,

A crocodile

Thrusting itself into

A canoe,

As ice blocks

Bite and puncture

A fisherman’s

Eclipsed eyes.

As They Left Their Burnt-Down Hut

(i)

A mud brick house

Broken into

A fleshless skeleton

Creates the dust

That builds and gilds

Not only its walls,

But plasters

The mind’s hands

With blood

Of rock to harness life

With neither reins

Nor saddle,

Nor the neigh

Of a reassuring horse,

As a family

Rides, dangling through

A night journey

Under bright blue skies

Still singing a sun’s song.

(ii)

A bodiless castle

With no walls,

But the weaver bird

Flying from

Fear’s shreds to weave

Loose threads

Of ripped-off hearts

Into a thick

Blanket of hope

In yarns of merino wool

Yet to be unfolded

Into the rough path

Of dog-molar pebbles

And cobblestones,

On which they walk.

A path barking out

A family’s inner selves

Still unburnt

Tinder in the flames

That devoured

An elephant frame

Fencing in life

Now housing dead mice

And dead rags.

(iii)

A house left behind

In ashes and soot

Warms a frozen heart

Sunk behind a veil

Of clouds dressed

In dark fumes,

A cellulose wall,

A wind-lifted wall

Planting its feet

Into the floor

Where a mountain sits,

Where a new round of life

Begins with flames

In an eternal twilight sky

Never burnt out

But flowering through night

Into dawn’s pink rose.

The Mouth-Flamed Cake

(i)

A mouth-flamed

Crake

stands floated

at the far end on

a drifting leaf-floored

purring pond.

It spins a ripple

Widening

louder and faster

than its words

oozing out from

a storm’s mouth.

The crake

in a new sky,

having slipped out

of paws,

a spike-toothed

cat licking its lips

in a compass’ needle point

of larger ripples,

a huge beak injection

still sinking

deep into the meow’s veins,

as a hawk flees.

(ii)

The crane’s gaze

melts it beyond

a sunrays’ path, sinks it

into the flames

roasting its spine.

The outstretched girth

of a rising

cactus lily lime lights

a retreating star.

The sky burns

with a glowing red

wound, hiding

its own scathed scar.

Standing on a pond’s

sinking pad,

the leaf that sails

with webbed feet

on its back, tilting,

a light angle,

but not flipping over,

as its long-legged roots

clinch clay

carrying the pond’s body,

a mass carrying

the sky that only spins

in grinning circles.

(iii)

Falling branches

spin a pond’s ripples.

A cactus’ breath flowers

a torch ripe

with long thin swords,

piercing and tearing

the sky into ripples,

the sun’s widening corona.

Splashing light

on the crake’s eternal flames

struggling

to squeak out

the name of the cat

that ignited them

with a jack saw’s teeth.

(iv)

As ripples on a pond

spin life’s eternal ripples,

the flaming crane

wonders

what happens beyond

dying ripples.

What happens beneath

dying ripples

where a crow cruising

over a pond

bites off the flames

of a closely chasing hawk,

and dives

into deeper flames?

Frozen Moments

(i)

Lipless moments now,

As thin breezes slash

The numb stashes

Of low-murmuring air,

And tree