Tailored to the Stars

By Felix Bongjoh

While much has been said about stars, this book of poetry considers those beaming on a garden through a moon-lit night to be the ultimate harbor, where solutions to ubiquitous problems encountered during the day may be sorted out. Appreciating the beauty of a quiet star-lit night may also hatch questions about and clues to solutions to everyday nagging enigmas, sources of agony, temptations and jubilation over overcome predicaments and sudden dead-ends. Rays from the sun, from street lights, from the moon, from stars, and, above all from the mind tend to connect in symbioses that hatch genuine expression combined with an effusion of feelings to project commonplace patterns and themes that harness various facets of life. Stars in their generic sense, as interpreted herein, have given rise to the title of a book covering life and death, war and peace, love, anger, the ugly and the beautiful, etc., the significance of life as characterized by not only by joy, but also issues we have to deal with, drawing inspiration from various symbolic sources of hope, including the stars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781490798318

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

Fishing Out Of A Crib

(i)

Spasms of spun water

On a stretching lake. No fish

Spurting out

To fall into cemented nets.

Large-pored scoop fabric

Still wriggling

Under a gliding tailor’s forehand.

Thumb pressing a song

Paddled by waddling duck feet.

No bubbles

In hopping gusts of hope

Blooming

With Speckled trout.

But enough cobblestones,

Bow-legged twigs

Hugging reeds wearing snakes’

Heads, whisking

Mini-dogs’ tails and whiskers

From hose-channeled

Light falling

In creeping worms of plasma

And grown into

Flower-feathered meadows,

(ii)

Grasshopper breezes

Bouncing back

From symphonic hops,

A bee-harboring whimper

Stretched into

Flowers of a flame:

A smiling baby’s crib. Grandma

Too fishing out

A sun’s crown stuck under

A baby’s pillow,

Where Venus unfolds

Egret wings of light, a mooing cow

Twisting head

Horns stroking a giggling baby

For the gorge,

In which hands are buried

To bask in showers

Pumped in by the beaming flames

Of a clarinet-mouthed bass,

Blown by grandma’s

Fat laugh catching a fish of love

From a blooming baby’s crib,

Bird-feathered hands

Gliding through

With soft padded plastic fins.

Sun In The Storm

(i)

What grinds the air

On grindstones and slabs

Of above-lawn fields,

Molecules and dust

Swept to stumble

Against stonewalls of wind

And die in gutters.

Where geckos laugh

And mock you,

As you wriggle

Into a crushed spider of sludge.

Its cuts and wounds

To be cured

Only by a petal-mouthed zephyr

In red-feathered wings.

(ii)

Lips flipped apart

Like the two thick pages

Of a frown’s book

Placed on a cornmill’s

Spirals and circles

Sketched by a machine’s

Drunken brain

And hands planting

And scooping out

Powder for a waxed meal

Knives on stropped knives

Of flickered bobs.

The gutter gecko in a sun’s attire

Gleaming with a lever

To peel down a face,

Embroidered

Droplets of melted ice

After a well-dosed

Drumming fright.

(iii)

What grinds

Wings and feathers

Of dew-scarred air

In heavy cloaks

Of night and soot

And rolled-up sleeves,

Bamboo-feathered ash

And fish scales

Of mist

Floating in skies

Grown in an Ambazonian’s

Bowl of nebula

From which a sun blooms,

A firefly

Piercing through with dim light

In a dark tunnel.

An overgrown night,

Beams in its thickened storm,

Hoist overhead lamps,

A vehicle thumping on.

A Day’s Speed

(i)

A snail in a seaside shell

Rolled over the edge

Of a swooshed-out wave

Dives back after a canoe,

Hauled by a nerve’s feather,

A hair-curled speck

Bulldozing away a mountain

From its roots held down

By steel claws

And worn-out threads

Of breath ripped

To pieces of its stitched self,

A streak of lightning

Leaving no scarred sky.

(ii)

No egg-smooth beam

Drifting corners

Under a blinking sun hatching

Peeping chicks

Behind blood patches

Dripped off to sprinkle dusk

With a bleeding day’s end,

As a morning cock’s

Split crow

Sketches a life cycle

That never ends.

(iii)

Never begins to end

At the edge of its cracked

Egg shell, on which

No screeching brakes

May skid off a track

With life’s thumping engine

Accelerated down

A slope flung back to climb

The same slope,

As it cruises with bruises

Faster than a falcon’s

In a whirlwind

Deep in late dusk’s broken sky.

Deep into