Hi there,
I see your brown eyes that dare
I see their happiness,
and unpredictable mischievousness,
Warm with crinkles on the edges and all
Promising me an irresistible fall

you there
They said, your brown eyes that dare
Telling me to be brave
and pursue these things I dare crave
Swearing to be there by my side and be
The best of friends with me

hi there
I say to your brown eyes that dare
I see your happiness,
and blatant lightheartedness,
But I see behind those madness and all
That your heart and soul are ready to fall

I'll be here
I wish your brown eyes could hear
I'm now telling you, be brave
Just let go of the darkness you crave
I swear to be by your side and be
Ready for you to lean on me

I know this girl from Texas
Who rustles up smiles for free
Feels like home on the range
With lasso in hand
Pretty as you please

Warm and comfortable as a campfire
Wild as a coyotes howl
God was right in his choice
Giving her an angels voice
Mixed in with a Southern draw

There's a mischievousness to her roundup
Like that of a rouge rodeo
Playing life's full hand
From sunrise to sunset
This girl from Texas that I know

_____


another mourning morning, usual signs of warning,
wanted to wash away the distress signs of no sleep,
turned on the tap, out came only troubled waters,
my only friend, the voice from the mirror, pretending
to be coming from me, speaking: Oh Lord, Oh Lord!

is there no surcease for me, somewhere, can I find,
little bites, small plates, pieces of peace, the kind
of kindness that eases, repairs the dividers of mind,
the country stone fences that been growing wilder,
when, troubled child of 10, window breaking, beyond
youthful mischievousness, evil streaked, so deemed

Give me a boat, give me a bridge, give me a road, a home,
one of those things poets, songwriters about, wax lyrical,
Oh Lord, give me time, 45 seconds, even two or three,
Being strong, being confident, am I not entitled to that,
a boat, sturdy mast, cause sailing from storm to storm,
just glimpsing dry land, is that too much, a pale beyond?

love, nah, a bridge too far, not even on the menu, not blinded,
I am off key, not well enough, between the peaks between,
I am out of sync, bubbling discombobulated, a **** besided, behind,
lend  me a finger, not even a hand, a kernel, not even a cob,
a string, forget a rope, a washcloth to bathe and dry,
lay me down, lay me down, to live, even just not dying.

Give thanks if someone
Smiles to see you!

Give thanks if your parents
Scoff at your mischievousness!

Give thanks if your friend
Takes you to a mosque!

Give thanks if an elderly
Holds you in esteem!

Give thanks to those
Who consider your goodness

In a time of self centered life
And none is trusted to be yours!

Give thanks for it's our heritage
And thank God for its existence

As Giving thanks is a sharing of love
That is need of mankind!

Moments of happiness
Laughters and joy
Whispers of mischievousness
Life all the way...

Then....

Anguish and pain
Sentiments of despair
Cries amidst relentless rain
Promises scattered in air

The story ends and such a sudden good bye
Sweetest Love! I wish I could die...

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.

/it's not that other people are hell... it's that drinking with other people always brings me down to their level of intelligence, one tier above wonton, and one tier below a Piccadilly promenade... alcoholics like leeches... I could never stomach drinking with other people... which is probably a mishandling of a quote by Diogenes... res extensa as proof that res cogitans has been conquered: mxim compediums... people quacking and barking ancient maxims and proverbs for proverbial structures to make, things apparent in the context of: being fashionably attired, to suit the gimmick clock of, choking on regurgitating the same sayings a posteriori, namely,  without a priori foundations... I agree, most maxims are written in an a priori vein... no I don't have the stomach to lie to women, i'd rather cling to celibacy and take to *** with a *******, once every 2 years... what's the problem when otherwise surrogate ******* takes 9 months? i can't imagine other people being hell, other than hell being: drinking with other people... brother Rotgier, "son" of Zygfryd... no wonder my second name is Conrad... such is my sympathy for the western neighbours... somewhere between a msgpie's cackle, and a suffocation from drowning in a droplet of Pomeranian Baltic.

n England I'd be prone to writing
"poems" / bookmarks
while listening to music,
but here, death speaks like
a deafening orchestra
in a drum & bass crescendo
blitz continuum,
tomorrow, another year,
and a decade to boot,
can pass me by,
       and still the remnant statue
beneath the waterfall
winking and giving a sly smile
in the satanic, pagan furor
of mischievousness...
                   long lost this spirit,
withdrawn into blue,
a leisure of humour,
in tact of crows in hadean trenchcoats  
at a funeral itching lessons
in flight and Tom Petty karaoke..
the service quality of penguins,
otherwise in the shadow of my mind,
and impromptu jazzy crisp whips
worthy of deep fried crisp tatties
on the snare...
    and the popsicle before
the scythe harvest...
shame...
     come to think of think of it...
revision:
   HAMMER & THE SCYTHE....
       because let me tell you...
as much difference between
a hammer and a nail,
as there is between a scythe
and a sickle...
   the diffrence in the contort...
throwing a ***** into an Arabian
harem, ensuring the "prophets"
be propped, properly
           "dressed" in ****** trim...
******* hanging off
a guillotine's tailor scoop
to masquerade for a once,
proud, and rummaging
   in fervent heart, odious stag
when staged, counter,
man, cockroach...
                  nature came crushing,
benevolent king in a wheelchair;
******, wielding an atom bomb...
     ßpeschial!
oh well... too bad satanic poetry
had to come across as the sole
mythos of a plagiarism of writing time...
+×÷=...
           cross-eyed...
pointed left, i walked right...
pointed north, i walked south...
i believe in a woman's rights...
hell...
            i believe that women
have the right to decide over their own
bodies, as man had the right
to not pay alimony...
               pro abortion anti alimony...
what?
           because playing Mr. Bean
was going to be easier than playing
Black Adder?
                    
answer is: I don't want to know...
in the ultimatum
I was told to prepare for death,
and surely,  nothing of
the living is ever translated
to wager with the dead...
        a **** every 2 years with
a *******, is still frowned upon,
compared to Elton John
using third party cocktail
surrogates...
                
  because was it ever a party?
    once every 2 years...
     too much ape **** admiration
to translate it back into
an ***** spine swindle,
   plus musical with a vjolin.

i bow before the humbled one, for i abide by no credo of a torture instrument; better bestow my hopes on the hopeless one, than entertain the audacity of those who bypass him, un-humbled, not guardian of the attire of a hunchback's garb in body, or shadow... i pledged my allegiance to the one seeking solace in ensuring the lie was but a joke, the one who nourishes my tongue to flourish, bloom and be a gift of flowers, upon a barren sea of striking grass... may i consider myself to be his second apostle in this verse of tongue, and may i receive the same proof of guidance, by being blinded, akin to my predecessor; unless i be blinded twice-over, by having reached a stage of writing: the most ugly choice of words, worthy of nothing more than, a place in a newspaper.

i believe in facts, oh yeah,
facts are important -
but not when they're
paced to an encyclopedic
barrage's worth of
regurgitation...
             this whole **** about
writing history
without actually making any?
that kills the greyest of
the grey matter in a person's
brain.
    i truly think that
we've become vultures of
the past,
           we're sucker-punching
the dead into waking up
once more...
            fist-******* the dead
into staying awake,
when they're clearly dead-asleep,
championing the warrior
in a society of incubated
violence surrounded by
         pacifism and dead-weight
**** -
          strange,
female genitals were always
considered a currency,
while the male genitals always
the warring mechanisation
where the other organs
managed to congregate -
           what's worth celebrating
the "warrior" these days?
probably about as much worth
celebrating filling a shoe
  with 200 peanuts...
               sure, bulging,
sure this that and the other -
they should at least allow these
gym freaks to produce electricity
by allowing them to work
that hamster wheel of the tread...
they could generate about a day's
worth of light-bulb energy in
an hour session at the bulging
protein parlour.
                 point is,
i feel that i have no place in history,
just a tomorrow and
a yesterday...
   i hardly think there's a today when
i think of today in the cofines
of a tomorrow or a, yesterday...
just another hour,
  with another "hour" added to a day,
a month, a year...
                  and it can only
be said is that the most honesty
you find in people,
is in their dishonesty...
but i am under the impression,
in Milton's terms:
that lying ought to begin with a joke,
be attired in mischievousness -
to tell a lie is to also tell a joke...
  *dico mendacia etiam est dico iocus,
how the satanic "lie" of eden is
now misrepresented, and taken toward
the heights of overt-seriousness...
for all our quests in understanding
of the originality of a sin that's
without any originality to abide by:
a mere plagiarism of the gods...
                  the court jester is riddled
in what was no lie, but a mere joke;
when an angel lies, he jokes...
it is unlike the same utilisation of
lying that a man makes use of -
there is no humour in a man lying,
only the hidden hand, the strings,
and a puppet.
                       man is no liar for
the chance of a good joke,
man lies for the desire to manipulate...
which is why i deem, akin to Milton,
satan, the father of my narrative,
as well as the much respected heckler
in a crowd of: mutes.

It is a creamy white dream
of soft skin
that blends in
a flow
from her toes
to her long
blond locks.

Her stomach curves
only slightly
on either side
with an almost
perfectly
symmetrical
quality.

Her collarbone
moves in an almost
perfectly straight line
from her small
but strong shoulders
that are well defined.

Her face speaks of
youth and love
with silver eyes
of mischievousness.

Naked form
adorned with nature’s
lovely blessing
gracefully undresses
to share the artistry
of the small ******* I see.

I do not have to look sexually.
Even though a small part of me
stirs pervertedly,
the other part observes carefully
with a deep appreciation
of the bravery
it take to share what I see.

It is even stranger when I read
her poetry of an even deeper quality
because the sexist in me
does not expect to see
such physical grace and beauty
intertwined with a divine poetic mind.

Deeply rooted in me and my thoughts
As charming embodiment of innocence
Peaking with adorable mischievousness
Making faces when angry on trifle things
Fading my anger with a gleaming smile
Gleefully jumping as dance to music
Hugging me around with tiny hands
Kissing my cheeks with drooling lips
Deepening in my thoughts
My tiny tot…..
Whom I love a lot…..
Just like her name implies ……
“Deeply rooted” in me
My  NITHARA……!!!

They are turned on their sides.
A reflection of status maybe?
All worthy, someday?  to find a place…
perpendicular, with those that managed to reach the end.  

This one I found in Portland. Smells of espresso and rain…
This one was a gift. Feelings of guilty neglect linger.  
This one reclaimed from my father’s collection…faded sticky,  
marking his lack of patience with it before he died.

Something so very compelling in the spines and pages.  
The tangibility, the dusty musk… Itchy arms, dare not bring to bed.
They stare out at me -some nights. Sleeping. Behaved.
But there is a mischievousness and power in them.

I will still commit that their words will become mine.
But as I wrestle with the pile, all vying for attention yet again,
I wonder at all of this wood, a veritable bonfire of farewells.
Turning my head sideways, so many of my chapters unread.

October seventeenth
nineteen hundred sixty one
and October seventeenth
two thousand twenty four
represents, signals,
and traces sixty three orbitz
completed round the sun.
by one cherished,
(despite lapse of calling,
emailing, or texting),
nevertheless loved,
and prized Earthling
named Shari Todd Harris-Dunning.

More'n half (almost two thirds)
regarding aforementioned existence
of said sibling, whose life linkedin
with spousal enrichment dream academy,
while hunkered temporarily down -
until she and her significant other
embark on another globe trotting stint
livingsocial, in Bend, Oregon,
otherwise known as GADSHILL Farm,
hence the hyphenated married name.

Though said endearing youngest sister
approximately forty five plus months my junior,
ofttimes during earlier mein kampf,
she displayed quasi
maternal (motherly) mien.

Even back during mine boyhood
dark shadows stirred
along the edge of night
(emanating from outer limits
of the twilight zone),
which spooked me to flinch
as did appearance
of the boogeyman induce affright
only exacerbated my delicate mental health
which emotionally punctuated precariousness
within psyche of mine

with disequilibrium ******-social blight
above named sibling
a bonafide unflagging
prairie home fine companion
who made killer powder milk biscuits
even as kids (living in Lake Wobegone)
as children, she more so analogous
to being my Bobbsey Twin, I cite
twilled me in the valley
of love and delight,
with her divine guidance,

an emotional refuge rescued
sought deliverance from anguish
loving succor proffered
peace upon mine body, mind, and soul,
she did immediately expedite
warming cockles of me heart
analogous to affecting, creating,
forging, jumpstarting, offering, and ushering
ideal paradise island temperature
if measured by degrees
balmy fahrenheit 451 (ha)

pointing, revealing, shining,
and training a guiding-light
unafraid to defend diminutive
docile, inordinately meek brother,
when threatened courtesy bullies
that significantly towered over me
below average stature in height
a measly little skinny,
long haired pencil neck geek,
yet zany as Corbin
(very private joke) Bill Thurman's cat,

(when within comfort of home) lad
naively oblivious rebukes
delivered courtesy our mother,
when her second born daughter
a fiercely academic and dynamic student
ever since she set foot in the classroom,
or summoning forth indomitable courage
particularly when she got diagnosed
score of years ago being in the throes
of thalassemia anemia minor,
nevertheless honorably accepted

fallout from infrequent -
at most a small number
of memorable bouts of mischievousness
such as after smoldering marshmallows
damaging the brand new toaster oven
sparked, and kindled outburst
from mommy dearest
figurative tinder, which squabble
escalated in intensity
sparking vehement feud to ignite
loosing volatile verbal exchange

triggering (hyperbole on the way)
The Emergency Alert System
to issue warning
lest clear and present danger
(at 324 Level Road)
recorded in history books
licking flames, overshadowing, rivaling,
and undermining revolution
analogous to spelunker donning jacklight
before trumpeting unexpected goldmine.