NOBODY’S BUSINESS
I am a poet describing nature
none of your business if I have
mansion or live in a teary hut
curse me or spit on the sand I
step on, i chose the life I live now
Destiny choose me for this dream
Its nobody’s business what I do.
I have known girls from the hood
I have dated girls from the hood
many I have made a public hole
change their profile side-down-up
and they’re called unprintable names
its nobody’s business whom I choose
to marry now and tomorrow.
I have been to school and dropped out
I studied medicine and no result
I have always wanted to go to the sky
crack it bodies and return home
happy but mother rechannelled my
legs, now, I have no route in life
its nobody’s business the life I live.
I have no children to give me water
My house is littered by lizards and
Wallgecko describing dire poverty
even if I feed from hand to mouth
Leave me to my fate and eel destiny
Life is but a dotted scars in hearts
It’s nobody’s business to tell my tale.
My father reek of bottles of beers
He found home in gutters always
My mother is a furnace religionist
She found grace in arms of Bishops
Don’t mind what their children
will be tomorrow or today, It’s
nobody’s business to tell of their lives.
Christians are ambitious catholic
than Pope Francis of Roman catholic
why wag your mouth here and there?
why point your finger here and there?
what is your business with their lives?
Pull down the sun today if you like
You have no business with their lives.
I’ll keep wandering and get lost in the
Darkness, don’t look for me like your lost
country; it’s none of your business
Remove those things in your eyes
before mine, I have no business with your
businesses morning and night.
I choose the life I will lead for today.
I have no business with your
businesses, no, I don’t have any!
Marry as many wives as you like
Plenty your hair with fish hook
Paint part of your mustache grey not
my cup of tea to drink and get drunk
I have my own headache to think of.
EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS
Open the book of history chapter 19
Allow your shadow to roam on its surface, turn to verses twenty and
wait. trace your finger forward, keep going; then Stop! Do you see that word corruption marked In red complexions?
That was who they made us to be
after the amalgamation of our thought
through their thought to find home.
You bottled up yourself and elected sickle cell patient in office to rule
While the youths lazied at home.
Last time was a woman and his wife,
a man; and you cracked yourself up,
Break every bones of your marrow biopsy complaining and singing how
Womanly he was to lead you home.
Now, what is the scores for Chelsea?
open the constitution of your land,
Flip towards section 111 of the book.
Where was it written an eye for eye?
Was there a mouth for jungle justices?
I know is not your cup of tea to see a
Brother beaten black and blue alone.
He pleaded not guilty but they killed him, has he sinned more than the
cocktail Politicians that stole money?
I broke my silence and spelled pains
and tears and sorrowful agony
To those that killed themselves in themselves before the end comes.
I agreed with my fears when I saw no
PVC among my people but naijabet papers. I made my doubt fixed my broken legs to shave off angered tears.
You need yourself cos here is chaos.
When we cry to be free and clear,
Our grandmothers collect cups of rice
On the campaign ground for all of us.
Don’t you know to be poor is a way of life and to be rich is a way of death?
When a fly passes by you rant and call
Government who has sent them to you.
I agreed with my fears that government will place that morsel into your mouth!
2019 is everybody’s business to handle
We can couple together those broken
Laughter left on our humble fine faces.
Dusting of every road in the state is everybody’s business to talk about.
Those colourful children in the street are everybody’s business to care for.
Not my cup of tea if you fail in your business of patriotic service to the land
Now, close the book in your thought
Let me tell you a broken tattered tale:
Our ancestral politicians are the disguise herdsmen in the greener street of our home. Don’t mention my name to any ear finding truth in this lie I just told.
I am going home now, my mother seek my face for an errand I have to run.
We are all reeked flag and coat of arms.
THE DAY NIGERIA DIED
Down here,
is an abysmally dead world!
The sun shines at night while the moon
Illunates the busy day
Plane run on railway tracks and let the
Train fly up there in the sky
Ship have taken over the road and allows the vehicles to sail on oceans.
Our soldiers returned home joyfully and send their wives to the war front,
While they breast feed the babies at home.
People die of hunger seated before a banquet
A flower planted by the riverside die of drought.
Out there,
you do not dodge potholes, you only choose the one to enter.
Down here, water stick between our teeth,
Fishes run helter skelter into the forest,
The mountain minted into water as the streams flow into the deserts in horror;
And rivers rise above the skies for safety.
Stars descend to the grassland for cow’s milk
The heavens are rented by the wild beast of underground.
To see a man of reputation here is like looking for a virgin lady in a brothel.
On this land
Mother taught us how to smile sitting beside a corpse,
How to cry when we see a man succeeding;
How to giggle watching the hell fall on us fiercely.
Watching here like a dry tongue
looking like shadows from old men,
Looking like a garage filled by slippers.
This land died yesterday
This land never gave us shards of new beginning,
She died leaving a quatrain walked out of it body,
It died owning wounds in our heart…
The day Nigeria died was the day we littered the skies with accusation fingers blaming the government of every fly that crossed our path.
She made our joy dissolved into shreds of sorrow. Lack. Pains. Calamities!
When you see a child sing in the fireplace,
he either sing of his lost mother or father or his only palm fruit.
Nigeria died in our hands and knees
Spelling this spit of fire from my sister’s lip, the beneficient knowledge of dead show how illusion killed many of us.
The day Nigeria died, she died in our palms crying of her lost prestige.
Oh!
A country of glee!
Oh mother land! Oh father land!
We’ll sing no more dirge at your grave
Those flowers shall we gather home
We’ve failed you and killed you looking at each other eyes to find the culprits.
Go well till we make you better by 2019.
WHO’S KILLING NIGERIA?
Has your grandma told you how
she queued to collect a cup of rice
at the campaign ground?
Has your father narrated to you how he was paid to steal the ballot papers?
Has you been told how your mother shot a man down for a politician?
and now, you are a thug for them!
You’re suffering from the same greed rust that peeled your heels like a yam tubers that goat menacely tear.
Your uncle told us a snake swallowed the money meant for his office & we
all rubbed our stomach & left him alone.
We never chased the snake in the street.
Your auntie told a tale of how a monkey cart away with her money & we smiled at her tale without asking how! Can she still spill sparky sperm in billion?
Do not sit by the door post and weep!
Do not say anything to the abandoned firewood that told of our foregone lives.
Weep not, son, for the gods have
woken from the laps of a prostitute.
Those who cried under the rain we’ve seen their tears dangling on their chin.
Political slavery is not skin deep than us,
We made it arose from that creeping serpent that crawled unseen to bite.
Do not ask of my name as a poet cos
I am as ageless as the lonely cloud,
Just know what I have scribbled now.
You and I killed Nigeria before time.
Our history was never baked in our school, it was baked by whitemen creed,
They dragged us to the mud to believe what they told us was right not left.
Weep not, daughter, your mother was
One of the cause of this tolls of death.
We are the fading sigh of everything
we long for & the echoes of our beings.
Our leaders are made from one cloth,
Same blood crossed path and they killed
Brutally in the mind of beloved mother.
My greed, our greed, your grandma’s,
Your father’s, your Uncle’s and yours;
Killed our mother before the universe.
There is an empty music in our voices,
You drum to your left, Obi, to his right;
You wagged your tail, Obi waved his
Hand & we never gets to a vocal point.
I am burning my body as a poet to stay alive for you and for this land, for my
Eyes is a mirror to revolution of thought.
We’re killing Nigeria ourselves in a ditch
of greed and corruption.
Yours Poetically,
.©John Chizoba Vincent
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