Poetry from John Chizoba Vincent

AND LIBYA SAW OUR WEAKNESSES
and my CNN opened on a breaking news on a dark street in Libya, about Nigerians chained to be sold as slaves.
the television slide and roved over,
their tears shattered and their blood spoke of pains on the blazing ground.
the newscaster hid her face,
the screen went on chaos,
the remote ceased as their tears quaked the entire earth.
from people’ basket of wailing, my heart shrieked and three cities were built:
graveyard, hell and death.
This was the totality of manslaughter,
a trade made by Africans against Africans.
they made their souls like an old nest,
torturing their brothers as if night and day are not the same to a blind man.
another ship has capsized in my body and my eyes is yet to find fins.
I have to die for these men!
I will hold down Libya for this blood!
I will decorate their cities with skulls and cracking cackling ghosts.
I will spread black demons on their grounded farmland.
I will break the bones of your infants,
Make their youths desolate to the world.
I will curse their old men and women,
Their rivers  shall be blood like Egypt.
Not in this season will my brothers wail like this and my government is silent!
Libya! Libya!!  When I shall start my dirge, your home shall be my starting point.
I have written my national diplomacy,
the world has seen my woes howled,
I have consulted the embassies of the UN
remember, butter is not made for monkeys!
when those blood shall start singing an elegy, none of your ears shall stand.
the last time I visited Libyan cemetery,
Nigerian dusts was what I saw.
if you see my mother looking out for me through the window,  tell her I have gone to Libya for my countrymen.
I am not a streamline to be wasted,
I will like to see if there are survivors,
I will like to see my people even their dust because I will take them back home
If my government is silent, i won’t be!
these are men that have children,
these are women that need husbands,
these are youths, our pride, to run our memories, to sip our memories, to occupy those bed back home.
Libya! Libya!  Where are my seeds seized on your border of sin and destruction?
leave me to a piano, I will play a note of your cruelty and music of sadness!
Bite your own tongue and see how painful it is to engage in a war.
and these weaknesses of my people you won’t see in me,  I shall stand like Okonkwo to kill and make life to those who wants to live!
I will anoint your head with sore palmwine that forsake fermentation.
those blood  you wasted are the sap of ancestral trees.
till then,  if see my father looking out for me,  tell him that I have Libya on my palms, our weaknesses  they saw yesterday is not cowardice but strategies and passport to reach the world.
it is a martyrdom, making me to wax stronger.
we walk our sagging lips
through a street of walls and emptiness
we hold our hopes and they fall like sands creating cascaded dreams like a rainbow in the sky.
  Nigeria is blood not water!

~FINDING SOLACE~
Sometimes, counting the sand becomes the only way I could find hope,
Counting the stars bring joy to my bored heart when all love is gone;
when searching means of arranging these broken words to form a life.
They told me this virgin map will lead me to finding fate and love and solace,
They told me this road where it’s dust groans are the perfect way, but it made not the roll call of my journey.
My eyes saw a black and red Jesus,
this made me believed every man is a home to himself like the tortoise and the snail.
The fish eyes of the smoke tells of a black world,
a world of danceful agony,
The teeth of the sky on the earth again,
The eyes of the earth randomly peep from the casket of the human’s heart.
Life is but a road, a Raven, a map, a word striking in between fingers, a tale,  a gulp of poisonous libidos of time;  a timeless region of basketed water.
If you have this elixirs of life, let me know,
If you could take your life and still have it, let me know;
If you can look the sun on the face,  let me know.
Faithfulness is found in solace of heart,
Finding the issues that made us humans,
Does a man’s  joy comes from the funnel between the woman’s  legs?
Does greediness and cowardice bite the air?
Loneliness is somewhere in the south,
Suicide is found somewhere in the north
Solace is somewhere in the east sliding,
One says stop and learn, another says get lost and never return, another says get lost and lost.
If you find me lustering the street of illusion, label me not as a loner.
Here I journey to find hope,  to find the knitted happiness,  to find a covered joy; a faithful love,  finding soft solace.
Tell Africa of my painful plight,
I have seen her shadows in despair,
Not on my palms shall the air bite in annoyance and greediness.
I will come, yes,  I will when I find this soft solace to my heart.
If caged in the presence  of doubt and fear,  the joy tilted on my tongue will sprout like fireflies and it’s hands in the air for solace is the breakdown of loneliness…
ILLUSION 
And this picture on the wall of my heart told a story of men giving birth  among themselves in the north promiscuously…
Sipping memories from the lungs of the  girl child.
They were not ashamed of the little ones watching their nakedness which howled at them mannerlessly.
We bathed the oceans again and again,
We made the sand shone like the moon,
We washed the sky daily to see clearly of what the earth has in stock for us.
We painted the earth and added more colours to the chirping rainbow.
Life became wet in our palms because we saw images and figurines of women  whose shinning womb were made abnormal  by men of yesterday.
And mother told of an innocent girl that killed her father, mother and brothers,
She was patted by the king for doing so,
As she told this ear breaking tale,
we saw the rain emerged from the ground instead of the lonely idle cloud that watched us through different mirrors.
They said we’ll live forever on paradise,
They said there is heaven and hell,
They said evil people will be punished on the last day,
They said we will burn for thousand years,
But how could a father punish his children with fire and brimstone?
How could spirit burn in a fire?
How could we tell lie to ourselves and expect the sun not against us?
We have seen cock making love to a duck and, dog to a cat, and grandma told us it was normal.
And Father told of the miseries of  the black spirit in our village streams,
How pouring of libation on the family shrine brings good wife and good harvest,
how rubbing oil and wearing palmfrond on your lips wad away demons.
he said there is a third heaven above us,
He told us why the He goat smells,
He said white ghosts do fly day time; he has seen the flashes of one of them at Benin.
After Christopher, I creed,
After Achebe I loved again
After Seghor
After Wole and Niyi’ folklores,
After Habila Helon,
After Chimamanda’s truths,
We’ll retrace this fables with a knitted thought towards strings of our voices.
How does the patient dog eat the fattest bone now?
Does the silent cock still live for a lifetime?
Mother lied to us
Father lied to us
Grandma lied to us
Grandpa lied also
A mirage formed
Teachers lied to us
An illusion created
We are not who we are through those illusion told to us through their lips.
FOR THE GIRLCHILD
To this brokeness of women, the world flopped and flipped out.
How life flawed and tampered the ice of the girlchild!
How green became red images to their eyes is still a misery to our flammable fable eyes:
of happiness gallopping towards sorrow,
We are here to locate the wind that
Caused their pains before they split into Imo and Abia.
How  would I tell them of tomorrow unknown?
How would I drive into their thoughts  and make a meal of time?
How would I tell them the river in our throats embrace dryness?
How would this earth continue to evolves and envelopes in their palms?
For they are our earth, women is the world!
Life to them is a wet roads with dry leaves…
Our hands have waved pity into their eyes to give solace,
Our legs have walked into their thoughts for glee embraces…
For the girlchild, for the innocent ones;
For those life peeled through their skins,
We have this to say:
We will never allow hunger to walk on the street seeking for you!
We will never allow cruel men come near you,
We will seek for men of goodwill to guide the chest of your virginity.
We’ll build a temperament alter of men
That will curse rape that walk in their thought.
This sand you walk on were your mothers who went fighting your course!
Many of them were trapped by evil men whose wealth blinded their eyes…
This is home again,  our souls are home for you and your kind to stay and merry.
Looking at this busy sun on the idle cloud,  we’ll hold violence  to ransom,
ransom for breaking you apart,
ransom for holding your innocent mind
Your images on the walls of dangerous men shall be retrieved back…
You will not be like a village defeated by war,
You will not look like an orphan when men like us exist.
You are the water soaked in the eyes of our dreams, dear children,
Make haste to conquer fears and doubts as you pour yourselves into yourselves.
We pray as we fight,  you’ll not mingle with a wrong men like water and oil.
This is our plead to pleasure your body
to the measurable deep barging silence.
You are golds to the eyes
Your are the gleaming sky…
You are the song in our throats splitting into cities of great wordiators.
To this world,  we’ll listen to this love notes rendered with a calm voice,
For you’re the world itself.
Yours Poetically,
©John Chizoba Vincent.

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