"borno" poems
Shall I compare thee to a summer's eve?
Tell you to cleave even though I know your name's not Steve?
Your eyes so white, a future with you so real.
Waiting for you like a parched farmland wait for the rains,
promises yet unspoken hoping you'll redeem.
The sun sets over the horizon, another day draws to a close.
As I hope in this love story, in the end I won't lose.
Reaching through the darkness, hoping to grasp a little of the unknown.
Love eludes me, like peace taken off the streets of Borno.
How shall these things be??
Like that garden valentine's story, I want to be your Eve.
But before you, there was one.
He has managed my heart like you've never had.
He sees right through me into you.
"Do you love me"? I ask Him.
And His reply makes yours seem like a child's play.
I understand that until you love Him, you cannot love me.
And until you love Him, I cannot love you.
Until we love Him, Valentine's day would be nothing more than shades of red and blue.
So before you give her that red rose, do you know the Lilly of the valleys?
Girl, before you melt under that candle light
Do you know light Himself?
Before your skirt rides up to your waist
And those hands skim over skin
Before she unbuttons your shirt
Before you forge out of "love"
What you are supposed to give birth to in love...
This triangular love story
Him, me and whoever is willing to complete it.
Before you come bearing promises wrapped in circles of gold
Put a ring on this triangle
Else me and you can only keep being parallel friends.
Journeying to nowhere
Mar 13, 2016
Mar 13, 2016 at 9:39 PM UTC
Mother won't bleed--
Mother won't bleed again to the breaking song
according to the gospel of insanity of man:
She says life is in the hands of a madman,
she says Sunday is not enough to bless the
memories of her son who lost in the hands of astraying bullets.We'll hold down Borno;
Mother won't bleed--
Mother won't bleed again in that house on
the other side of the street holding this tale
of her daughter with the etagere before she
took her last picture from the universe.
And the pastor said to her ghost
"dust & unto dust you shall return"
It was ash Wednesday & the frond hasn't
been burnt to ashes, would mother bleed again?
The leather missal is no more & Mary
could not attest to it provocative missing...
When we saw tears in the eyes of God,
We knew this house on the other side of
the street started this--the madness in us all.
We could not see also the body of the missing Christ.the figurine. the chaplet.the rosary.
Mother won't bleed again to this course...
But her memories did not start in Benue
Where she beheld laughing ghost of humans
celebrating how her homeland tortured them,
It started here in that house on the other side
of the street where her two children died in fear. anxiety. depression. tears. forgotten.
& she taught us how to dry our eyes before Sunday service.
©John Chizoba Vincent
#TheSage.
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019 at 4:25 AM UTC
Dear Nigeria,
Let me, at this juncture, pose my pen on the marble of innocent souls.
Let me, at this point, peruse the world of broken bones and listen, attentively, to the melody of lyre.
This poem is an elixir.
It has no beginning; it does chant the panacea to global pandemonium.
This poem is a remnant of Borno's corpes—
And that of other bleeding States.
This poem has no ending.
Its components were chosen from the archives of history.
This poem speaks of the civil war and the state of the nation, every now and then.
It does enunciate the heartfelt of the stars' constellation.
This poem is pregnant and, it won't go on maternity leave until the dogs in the neighbourhood stopped barking in my compound.
Until peace is restored on the entirety of the soil of our fatherland.
Until all roads are— without fear, anxiety and instability— usable by our travellers...
Until then, this poem will speak zillions to a layman.
Feb 15, 2020
Feb 15, 2020 at 2:38 PM UTC