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.

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.

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