Ebbing Out, Bouncing Back

By Felix Bongjoh

The thread that holds life together is one that sometimes breaks loose and diminishes its grip until it is no longer a force that matters. It has to be rewound well enough to hold firm again. Whether we are drifting in or out of a life’s shore considered to be home, a wave ebbs away out at sea and bounces back to shore in much the same way as life does, as we travel away from or return home. With the sea’s tide, the back-and-forth movement governs and harnesses life’s journey. Thus, whatever the circumstances, in which we find ourselves, man is reminded that life is in a state of flux, although relative permanence and stability are also factors, from whose prism life may be construed. This vision of life reflects a nonjudgmental reality, which recognizes everything in life as possible. Wealth, mental states (including happiness, stress, anger, etc.) hunger, death, poverty and so forth are all facts of life that do not contradict how we ebb out in the sea of life only to bounce back to shore. The poems in this book reflect an element of this view, some specific themes of life, misery, poverty and death running across a spectrum of realms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781490798004

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

Ebbing Out To Bounce Back

(i)

Askesis, the heavy crown

To wear, letting

An elephant sit on you,

As you brush off

Prickling thorns with

An alligator’s spiked bark

And buffalo horns

Tilted from a serrated

Spear’s angles,

Where mosquitoes lull you

To doze away

In a river spilling spring water,

As it gulps down

Red ink and nectar

From your veins.

As it sips off

Every ounce of your

With the same hose

Hooting and booming

With a tempered

Trombone’s thirsty throat.

(ii)

The only zephyr

Sponging off remnants

Of a wasp’s

Broken teeth

And an eagle beak’s soft

Greeting

With palm lines

Sketching maps to a place

By vipers

Basking in juicy sun,

Spraying nylon sheets

And wool blankets

Over stemmy bodies writhing

In ice stones

(iii)

From breaking corners

Of pneuma’s hat

Woven out of sizzling filaments

Of steam still

Thickening into threads

To stitch a wildfire

Into a shore’s

Tickling and twinkling zephyr

By a garden

Spurting out colors

From midnight’s gem-ridden

Nebula, as globe

Bounces away from an eclipse,

Where goddesses

Frolic and dance in funneled

Gem-lined robes

From which mumbled bells ring

With broken organ mouths

And asphyxiated flutes.

Here, at the peak

Of a thin pylon

With no ribs, I’m ebbed off

In a slapping storm,

Tossed off down a deluge’s

Deep gorge,

From which I rise back,

A neon bulb

Beaming from an electric pole’s head

Amid a thousand night flies.

Octopus and Squirrel

(i)

Your bloated crib fills me

With an empty house,

No toy, no buoy

To float me, as I glue eyes

To TV without you.

Only a groove-on-face

Re-echoes I’m here,

Rebounds, a sneezing balloon,

Its home wall-less air.

And into that dent

May I burrow to dress

A creeping gorge

With dimming clouds hatching

A tentacled silence.

(ii)

How does the octopus

In me, stop the fleeing

Squirrel with one wounded limb,

Leaving the other limbs

To wrap me up beneath

In a belly basket, appendages

Squeezing me in, letting

The squirrel scamper off,

Only to pop back to me

With a long-stifled bang:

I’m not melted out of sight,

Not thawed away by sun-bird

That won’t shine

With unlocked wings and flaps.

(ii)

How love stretches hands

Like a poking squirrel.

How a gore bleeds, as I fiddle

With a cracked groove,

That hollow only a plaster

Of love can fill, drilling me

Into you, into your shadow looming

Beyond bushy edges

Of a swelling brow capturing

Only you, harboring only you,

My berth stretching hands

Out to draw you into a moon’s home,

Where I sit in your couch,

Swelling back into a wallowing

Octopus, stretching

Appendages all day to wrap you

Back into a basket dome.

Into the desert of a living room,

Where octopus and squirrel

Play cards on a sea-wave maze,

A stetching sky-on-earth of hide-and seek.

Leaves in The Wind

(I)

Through the clatter and clutter

Of melted dew, thro’ stony bones

In murmurs without flesh

A leaf in a tree never dies.

It cleaves its navel

From mother tree, wriggles

Its way back to gleam

Green with snake chlorophyll,

As it steers its way up a twig.

A plant creeping, peeking

At life from a bird’s tail.

A rope of shabby grass swinging

With dead ants on the tree’s

Bark. As another leaf jumps

Into a ball of wind, kicking

Itself out, knocking itself off

Another unpreened feather of wind.

Only rustling blades trim

Silent straightened wires of light,

The only thread of sun’s corona.

(ii)

It dangles on auntie branch,

Dives down home on earth,

The only tomb spun by an axis

To build a dome’s womb

Called bumps and trees.

Flexed by a wind’s arthritic

Hands. Clung to a stem waving

Streamers from palmate

Spears. A tree branch arches a bow

To toss back wind arrows

At death, as a bleeding hawk

Drifts down spilling

Drizzles of rain. And waters spun

By a priest’s aspergillum

Under the rustling tree,

Leaves swayed to stroke me

With the only fingers

Of God to undo themselves

From petiole-wrists. Oracles too

Cleared their sizzling voices

Roasted by the sun.

(iii)

In the wind, they drifted

Curtains on wide windows,

Spoke in proverbs

That did not mix well with

Crackling twigs cranking

Up an engine that won’t ignite

The late morning’s mood.

Fill up these holes in sky ladders

Rising to keep pace

With columns of wounded light,

Clatter and creak O wind

In leaves, O breeze from vents

Carrying chatty voices

Colliding with the false alarm

Of a sky lark in search

Of its tail. In search of death

Chasing life, feathers forgone.

In search of a flying corn cob

Torn into the fabric

Of