(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

(for chikbok girls four years after elegies of lost)

And we opened the book of remembrance again
Tickling all ears that are designed to be deadly.
We filled the cups & buckets with tears of blood,
****** tears as the cloud rises from dark night
& the horizon of our lives radio out our prayers
in pleasure & pleas recording poetry into broken
Rhythms of the kings bird' songs singing elegies untold. We recoiled this pages of cries into folded arms. Lost is our liberty ephemeral into chaos.
This light of darkness are now printed in our
palms of history tormenting our own feelings.

they left home through the corruption of their father's land. You know, their lies ferried them
into Sambisa to go & tell a tale of their crimes.
the chromosomes of their pigments lacked the bravery within the wrinkled nose of their cheeks.
Lives are buttered fireflies &worms of mediocre...
We may not know how pains taste until untitled chapters of sorrow unfold in our lives to seek revengeful voyage of our sins towards our home.
We televised their lies on the national televisions,
tilted the head of our cocked brain into gadgets
in a ballroom of miscreants clothing our beliefs.

I opened this book of remembrance again,
For my lazy sisters that struggles effortlessly amidst leaves and shrubs of looting leaders.
for their tears composed a musical notes,
for their fight created astraying street steer
I held upto these fallin' memories in a graveyard
into the abstract demon of my noble moralities,
into black races, into an abstract journeys.
brittle of the papers written in absence of our
ourselves, in the pictures of our lost self issues.
we will gather these soothsayers to the cloud
to sooth out those prilgrim girls in the moon.

till then, let this dance be of survival &revival,
of those deaf & dumb girls kept in the ***** of emptiness. they made them voiceless like the pages of a blank books but we know all their magic tricks in the closet of their ignorance.
No chikbok, no Dapchi girls but looting politics,
Politics that has strange mouth & shadows.
Until this madness is cleansed from our souls
Point towards your chambers & crack your mind
We are mocked movies trying to be seen by all,
a documented fairy tale in the heart of all.


©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingfrustration