Of Things That Come In Black And White Poem by John Chizoba Vincent

We opened a book that started with the name
of our country.
The right side was numbered corruptionsand 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 arethe 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
From_A_Pen_Refusing_Frustrations.