FINDING SOLACE

Sometimes, counting the sand becomes the only way I could find hope,
Counting the stars bring joy to my bored heart when all love is gone;
when searching means of arranging these broken words to form a life.
They told me this virgin map will lead me to finding fate and love and
solace,
They told me this road where it’s dust groans are the perfect way, but it
made not the roll call of my journey.
My eyes saw a black and red Jesus,
this made me believe every man is a home to himself like the tortoise and
the snail.
The fish eyes of the smoke tells of a black world,
a world of danceful agony,
The teeth of the sky on the earth again,
The eyes of the earth randomly peep from the casket of the human heart.
Life is but a road, a Raven, a map, a word striking in between fingers, a
tale, a gulp of poisonous libidos of time; a timeless region of basketed
water.
If you have thess elixirs of life, let me know,
If you could take your life and still have it, let me know;
If you can look the sun in the face, let me know.
Faithfulness is found in solace of heart,
Finding the issues that made us humans,
Does a man’s joy come from the funnel between the woman’s legs?
Does greediness and cowardice bite the air?
Loneliness is somewhere in the south,
Suicide is found somewhere in the north
Solace is somewhere in the east sliding,
One says stop and learn, another says get lost and never return, another
says get lost and lost.
If you find me lustering the street of illusion, label me not a loner.
Here I journey to find hope, to find the knitted happiness, to find a
covered joy; a faithful love, finding soft solace.
Tell Africa of my painful plight,
I have seen her shadows in despair,
Not on my palms shall the air bite in annoyance and greediness.
I will come, yes, I will when I find this soft solace to my heart.

If caged in the presence of doubt and fear, the joy tilted on my tongue
will sprout like fireflies and it’s hands in the air for solace is the
breakdown of loneliness…

—————-

SCARS

My father’s tattered house breeds red demons,
and my mother’s kitchen feeds black spirits,
We grew up loving demons and black evil spirits that fly in the afternoon.
Our neighbours keep their eyes away from us,
They shut the eyes of their dogs whenever we are passing by,
Even their goats know the sound of our footsteps.
We become sour and bitter to their craving eyes but our faces are always
friendly,
we draw the lines of fear in the hearts of our neighbours’ children.
They run and run and run in despair
At the sound of our chorus.
They assume we carry demons and spirits in our pockets as we walk by.
They fear the lines on our faces,
They fear the jigida on our arms,
They fear the marks on our forehead,
They curse the morning to pop if we were the first they see;
They fortify the sand in front of their houses as father’s footprints
plant on them.
They call us unprintable names with
A flammable tongue.
We wear shame and disgust around our neck, chameleoning like the chameleon.
The scars drawn,
We become a mourning song that removes sleep from eyes.
Blemish created,
We become the architect of evil that the villagers never had.
When the world becomes silent, and busy legs no more walk,
Their hearts become our drums.
Children shriek from different corners
at the sight of our thatch roof.
Accusing fingers pour on us daily,
Legs hide from us as they see us coming,
We tried forming another body to be
Sane from our unknown sins,
But our bones, tissues, muscles, veins sailed away from their roots.
These are our scars,
Scars created by what we don’t know,
They call us “Osu”, a caste from the gods, but shall we become empty
birds in our own land?
What kills most of us are things we don’t know!
Leaving our shadows to wander in the dark is like a pimple on a corpse.
Innocence is a fool in the hands of tradition,
Ask your father the difference between your left and right hands before he
kicks the bucket.
We’ve lost a map of who we are!
We’ve missed a road tour to our root!
And grandfather is gone but these scars of discrimination
remain.

—————-

Poems © John Chizoba Vincent
Photo by Freddie Marriage on Unsplash.com