(Holding fire and water together)

I don't know why the rain keeps writing the
name of Nigeria on the ground in every corner.
I don't know why we are this broken and
tortured like the fragments of the dust.
I don't know why the Dapchi girls returned yesterday while their chikbok friends are
still in captive.
I don't know why every street in Nigeria is
known with an imprint of good leaders.
I don't know why we cry yet point accusation. fingers back to ourselves, who is fooling who?
I don't know why the sun cry here with a
closed lips.
I don't know why we keep writing love stories
while our brothers and sisters perish in shame!
I don't just know why but I think you should know.
Are you not the one that collected a cup of rice, clean notes and Abrahamic lie from them?
I won't speak ill of this land again,  I won't!
I won't judge any one, no, I won't for  the
sake of my unborn children.
No, I won't for the sake of what happened to Dele Giwa and Saro Wiwa.
We poets are abnormal psychologically.
We paints abstraction from the abstracts creating fears that might hurt those true patriots.
My muse fell out from me yesterday night,
When my television opened to a scene of genocide.
Men on pants, women on trousers painting out the tears made for people inhabiting hell.
Their laughters and smiles were printed to be archived among themselves.
I won't speak ill  of this country, no, I won't!
Because of my unborn children,
I won't!
But I will tell just one tale for them to remember
Of how monkeys carted away with our monies!
Of how Snake swallowed our currency!
Of how good our leaders are, I think you know!
I have been holding these demons in me until last night they came out horribly in fierce protest to revisit this land again.
To tell of those girls ***** under the bridge,
To ask why boys like me are named after me,
To speak against shadows of death lurking here and there.
Nigeria is grey and black, red and violent,
Retrieving this oceans of mysteries from the hidden abyss of grave corruption is the passport tabled on the pyramid top to recreate a versatile muses of a lyrics calling for a right to write our rights.
Take a walk to memory lane pass your shadow,  that of your father,  mother & grandmas
You will see a Nigeria in another angle trying to free herself from the grip of corruption, then, revisit her tears and struggles you will know we are the cause of our own misfortunes.!

©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustrations

I will cling closely to your breast;
on which my wearied head will rest.
I will lie gently on your thighs,
from whence I'll fly to distant skies.
I'll seek refuge in your warm arms,
it always my thunderous head calms.
I will to your heart find entrance,
the moment I'm given a chance.
I will in your smiles take delight,
when from looming trials I take flight.
I will from your voice get comfort,
in times of utmost discomfort.
I will at your heart's doorway wait,
even if your consent comes late.

what about the boys in Pakistan's war front?
what about those boys in Iran battlefield, those boys learning how to pull the trigger with a warning fingers on the crossroad of Iraq & Afghanistan?
what about those boys ***** in the street of Nigeria?
those boys in the act of loneliness in the army, what about them?
those boys lost in themselves in the thickest phase of life; what about them?
the boy soldiers with raw emotions & feelings & thoughts, who cares?
they lost the shadows of their fathers,
they lost the thought of their mothers,
they became a movie of suspense,
survivor's lines of remorse & yelling;
what about them?  
who cares if they are lost in forest like Kainene?
who cares about their lives like Okonkwo did to Ikemefuna?
who cares about their relationship like Inu Ego did with Oshia?
who cares...?
the ditches are wildly mouth opened,
and those boys in shell shall fall in there.
many are on the look out for a stone to hatch these shell boys 'cause they are said to be stronger.
what about the BOYCHILD?
I pray you reject sleep &think through this black pages of my tattered thoughts climaxed in horror.
what about the BoyChild endangered?


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustration

Tell the moon not to complain,
go to the sun and leave a note,
We are not a broken piece of poetry
campaigning for love and affections,
we are crystals, lest you forget!
clear rays penetrating into hearts and souls of humans that seek to make themselves gods into godhood.
we are not grasshoppers to be chopped by a lazy legs printing a falseful legacy.
We are the elephants of the forest of wealth.
Never slaughter the thought of our lives
We are the breath of humans & fire searching for what brewed within men.
We are poems inked with tears and sweat
But those tears are of our bravery, &sweat, a joyful noise made by the skin for celebration of our kind.
We ****** hope in the palms of children,
yet filled with love and its synonyms.
Our lives are the poets who rhymed & colour the sweet lyric they were made to be.
We are the boy children, the hope; least you forget.
The moon of tomorrow,
The sun on faces of a beaming girl
The stars carved on the smile of the sky,
We are boys whose shadows recreate
We are boys whose palms are route of greatness & roadtrip of principles.
praise singers in the slippery wet floor,
nightingales singing lullabies,
bread feeding all mouth to satisfaction
When heronic names are carved look and see ours rightly placed.
we are braver than earth
we can pull it up and down like a tree.


we are the reptiles that wriggle down the hill of success and roar like a beast in a beautiful pail palm of dreams.  
our fathers' tattered sins could not hold us down,
our mother's splitted fire guides our course of life!
We are the boys of tomorrow , the warriors of words hyping the hashtag of praises.
who has seen us has seen light,
He who behold us has nothing to fear.
We are mountains in praise of hope
we are oceans of mysteries and hidden treasures.
Have our words and actions in your words for we are time bomb against failure.
BOYCHILD, the sun that glows on every face that needs help.



©John Chizoba Vincent
From_ APenRefusing_Frustration.

After Amadioha went into sweet nightmares,
he made us to breath through the chest of the sea. from the celestial bodies of the shrine,
We shone our forefather's smile with a mirage,
a little littered mirage spelling words in ellipsis.
these were the rose crumbs tailored in the sand castle of our glassful laughter, we're the Palmful morning in the eyes of our home in the abyss.

when a child cries, he forgets that the route to
his home is written on his body as a tattoo.
when a girl thinks of gathering firewood in the heart of the forest, she thinks of her thigh &
the bushes surrounding it, nature made it so.
We do not think of our skin as a poetic of agony,
We do not think of our eyes as poetry letters
but we draw lines and currents of imaginations describing how rituals made men insane.

We carried out those prilgrim for the boys,
our forebearers made us cracked our head up,
they carved pumpkins traces for this generation; for this humble journey mixed with fire & water.
Our souls, our dreams were the Shakespearean places you never had the chance to see physical.
they are the rituals of nature, a side Sithoulte,
a wonder land created like a paradise you don't stay often but in your dreams & imageries.

We are birthed here as debris & plump scars,
a tortured lips holding the past & the present.
We are the foundation of everything evil spirits,
We were born in the ritual of a grievous war.
to say a human is a benchmark of his own,
to say a man is a mango dropping without a choice of where and how to touch the sand,
to say a man is everything fretwork of agony;
to say a men are slaughtered memories...
but to this edges of rites & repeated steps,
We'll remain the gospel from every mouth.

Our ancestral hands shall still set a table,
to tell the girlchild how to sit in a public hall
to hand over the shrine to the  boychild
to tell man that he owns a woman as head.
to keep birthing good and ugly children.
our hope will always depict heavens glory
and, our darkest fears as the skin of hell.
And it must be passed down to the next
genes to tell the next & sand keep multiplying.
This is the ritual of mankind to remain alive.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustrations.

i created another Jaja yesterday!
a braver Jaja unlike that timid feeble boy
Chimamanda gave life in Purple hibiscus.
i gave him a gun and a mightier heart.
i carved a pumpkin route for him to follow
i made him to have the mind of his own
then, I sent him to his father just like every
mother sends their sons to their father.
he gunned him down in his assaulted plights
he returned angrily to hunt me for this freedom
my experiments to pull him down failed
and I remembered mother also created boys
she abandoned to find freedom who later
came back to ****** her in their plights
Boys come in this formless shape creating imageries larger than them which returns to
Squeeze more juice out from their dark sides.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustration.

create a golden route for a poet like me,
let the embodiment of song carved itself
in the palms of the world beyond till lyrics
of faith light to ease the thought of my mind.
If you die before me, tell papa not to cry.
the shrine he left in my hand is still well
planted in the imaginations of his generations.

tell Fela &Giwa that Nigeria is no better,
tell Chinua Achebe that the water in our
throat cries of dry ground they stepped on.
we may not be a better cinematographer
capturing the deeds of this land but your
still photos can crop some timelines to go
with you till I come along to join your trail.

if you die before me, send a word across.
let me know the existence of heaven & hell
if Shakespeare & Okigbo & Buchi are there
so I can change course to path my emotion,
the artistic photography of the tales of hell
are the codeine conscience of anxiety in us.
we die before the masquerade halt in the air.

Husky tears would I drop on your grave
to be taken to Mandela & Luther King.
there are roses I will take from the clay ***
Of my father to your graveyard to give to Ify
my hearted lover in the morning of miracles.
if you die before me, this tattered call would
I make to our ancestors for a perfect survival.

this land is a disco dance hall you must tell
Yar'du of Fate & tears crossing our eyes
in a patterned way to be christened life's joy.
this land is a feminist like Chimamanda A.N,
this country is a pun star you must tell Ken.
tell my cousin Ezekiel to wait for me longer,
I am coming. to join him in benedicted rein of
our country.

If you die before me, I'll be on your graveyard
for a life time cracking up the foundation of
the world to find death. I will ask him if the
other phase is  better than here before coming.
suffering is not meant to be dreamed twice,
Two week-ed weaknesses are the wink wires
connecting our lives in a radioed embryo .

this is my recap
a captured scene
Let's bake life and dreams
till death call us all to himself
then the world becomes empty
love finds love mingling in hands...
die before me & be my eyes beyond.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingfrustration.

We opened a book that started with the name
of our country.
The right side was numbered corruptions  and the other side was numbered greed & bad leaders.
We burnt the stride of our bodies into aches and dreams waving away fire and foliage of silence.
Women learnt to carry portrait of bodies of their dead children on their shoulders, beautiful corpse.
It reminded us of the civil war in front of our Father's betrayed house.
It reminded us of lyrics written on the walls of our Hut with a framed keys of memories.
Love that taught us to look back into our heart and draw current of men in their ignorance in search
of a better home than those bridges we burnt.
Things like the pains in the eyes of a boy,
Things like the tale on the lips of a girl,
Things like sadness in the soul of a mother painting the images of her lost children in prayers.
Those strange tears stranded between chapters of the smoke as they travelled to the lonely cloud,
With the echoes of our forefathers last libation
Like the voices trailing from a boy's name for the lost of his prestige.
There are things that we may not know that leave our footprints to our heart through the opening in our nostrils and ears.
In our land was where a boy once stood on the face of the sun, his shadow reflected on a mirror.
He saw his future carted away by his fears.
Lost girls found in his assaulted plights
Trying to find home in a shark's mouth.
They hold water from the oceans together basking their hope on the traffic of women holding their bodies and leaving their dead for survival.
We do not live in the moon!
We do not whisper to the wind of the song we
heard him sing every day!
Of things that come in white and black are
like our straying country weeping with the
images of the masses.
Like those corpses brought back to BENUE.
Those images are the images of darkness projected by a big screen of the sky to our eyes.
Our names burnt into different rivers holding different tribes that seek for freedom.
We wrecked our testimonies to bleed blood with flames to suffocating cities surrounded with pity.
Those things on white are  the way we were built but the black demons corrupted us all leaving memories to sneak our hearts into dark places where mischievousness can take over us.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustrations.

No Fela and son could tell of
this present roaring Government.
We would soon forget this forgery pain
upon the odours the land created.
Empty bellies shall revive casualties
to beckon the spring of spiritualism
&the bed shall not talk of absence of
bodies on the feet of her tender care.
Our today has queued into the past
as our yesterday moved cautiously
like a troubled legs walking into exile.
Beware of Dogs!
Beware of those who came as saints
to rule you into heaven & paradise.
One was accused yesterday & today
He that accused him presented him,
the other fell on countless occasions
yet, you mounted his bills all over town.
I searched your eyes & I found nothing,
It moves like the eyes watching a
toddler step, coated with innocence.
I see the nakedness of my heart in the
Scars of my people yet, they've astrayed.
Do not hold a demon-smile between
your dark teeth!
& in your eyes, memories of lights...
Do not upset the snoring ritual of the dead.
Go home, help the living live better.


©John Chizoba Vincent
#TheSage.

Of those things that glamour for clarity
Of those roads that sipped dead calls
Of those shadows that retrieved retributions panache of the smoke that chased blunt images,
We are here for the death of our dead ones,
We are here to breeze out bodies from the ghost of our forefathers giving out beggars of spirits.
We are here for the sake of humanism and individualism found among the seasoned weather.
We are here to head home from the figures of fingers crossed in the blossoming crossroads.
We are just here for your sake &your future.
We are this spiced pumpkin skin driving impunity,
Driving the heavens of our lunatic fringe benefits.
When these spirits visited our forebearers,
We called them runners of evil in the night,
In the morning,  we called them cats of love,
But the white brought a foreign god to us
We sold our shrine of mystic miseries to them
Now,  they took our miseries to make names
And we transport their stupidity back to them
Thinking that they will accept it back from us.
This celestial aboundment is foregone fire
Forging the spirit of the world into our curriculum.
We are the timeless wrong that the villagers sing of along the Abiriba-Nkporo road.
Black Butler of generational curse we brought
Intentionally trying to visit the future vintages.
We are the cause of our own blood spilling through the thin walls of our shadows and spirits.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingfrustrations

My sister would always wait until the time
lose concentration in the dead evening.
She would tell mother it was time for vigil.
Her racial church always has one every Friday.
Mother won't complain cos she thought her
to be a good girl & we were the bad eggs.
I became sick of watching her go to this vigil.
I followed her trail one **** Friday evening
When she entered into the dumb house
The room went blind and I heard her moan
Mother is yet to recover from the shock.

When every searching eyes has gone astray,
Nneka would always learn to pleasure herself.
She would trace the hole in her thigh pleasantly
then, groan in an unknown tone in the dark.
Her voice searching for what is missing in her,
She would chase the calm darkness into chaos.
Our bodies would protest as we watch curiously.
Our skins would gather heated sweat into boiling water.We learnt to urinate more often as the groaning circulated in our disturbed eardrums.
Till now, we never learn what that is called.

In the village square before the new year,
Girls learnt to giggle watching boys dance.
they always have stories on their lips to tell
their parents.The village bushes were their home. a home for them and the other Boys.
they prefer the rough guys to the calm boys.
they prefer the ugly men to the fine boys.
as long as you could dance to their tone,
Your artistic performance will take them home.
then, they talk about you behind close doors.
how weak you were under their prowess.

In their closet they talk about boy's weakness,
The Perfume their men wear to please nose.
How the lips of their men taste in the dark
How broad the shoulder of their men look
How intelligent they are found in the night.
Women and their familiar need on men
Girls and their nagging lips against nature,
These are the nemesis songs among feminists.
Father told us about these snout skimpy girls
their preys are men of goodwill in light...
These are things girls do behind closed doors.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustration.

Out-li-er /-, li(-e)r/ noun

this dance was dying of old age.
until I learnt to move a toe.
a dance of old woman trying to see
the sun rise from the sole of her feet. 
her survival outlived a snoring nose.
these holes were carved out from the
thigh of a ******* learning how
to lay on bed. Is this life so sweet to you? 
then, live it without answering a call
to the whispers of the wind to your ears. 

let's visit blank pages. 
of heroes unsung from our historical mouth. 
of those things or people situated away 
from or classed differently from our farms
or a related body translated from the hood.
let's see this images from the eyes of my father trying to be a man before his children.

yesterday,  my father made us to learn
from the school of the African heroes.
he taught us how to be special among all.
how to name extraordinary a friend...
through bridges built in a hardknock.
a lust day. a littered day. a little more griavience.
a little caution is not enough for the craving eyes

maybe. 
maybe not. 
that we survive in this planet.. 

we'll come by in the evening of November.
we'll try to ease out our thoughts.
Maybe you will understand where the
pains started. our legs. our feet. or history.

maybe.
maybe not.
that we survive this gory miseries.

this pains were carved from the tree. 
where the ghost of our ancestors danced. 
they created this basketful paths.
they are the outliers. the geniuses.

maybe.
maybe not.
that we survive after the apollo' creed. 

that we journeyed through this forest. 
the forest cultivated by their ancestral hands. 
until we learn to be like them.
carving history from stones.
Making the sky brighter.
We'll not survive through this modern dance.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustration.

My eyes pierced into her thigh
Into the upper room of a hole
Connecting hell and heaven
I was introduced to infatuations
Hanging my thoughts and prayers
Through the imagination of her pride
I saw her nakedness through her look
Love spoke but lust became louder
I erected my body like a ghost tree
against a weak foundations, I fell
Not into love but into first sighting,
Into hedges of her fragrances,
My heart became plural of everything
heaven endowed her with.
My mind built her body systematically
I saw portrait of her ******* carved In
my mind eyes depicting song of adultery.
How she react to love making appeared
How she moan in pains as I tickled up &
down on her imaginative groaning body
My eyes drew in my pocket of thought.
I was lost in thought watching her move
Swiftly betraying my night embraces.
The shape of herself disappeared craftily
as I regained the ground of my posture
******* the tale of my eyes lost in lust.

©John Chizoba Vincent