Question life from the mouth of a pauper

Reuters photo

By

John Chizoba Vincent

The pain of being human sometimes slips from one’s thoughts through the imaginative groaning eyes of the world. The sun itself is an illusion of abysmally dead hope. We seek meaning to live while living is the only option life has for us. Question life and the pain it brings. Question language because it is the technicality of holding to yourself and losing one’s self to death and crises. Question how the eloping dreams of your childhood memories left without a farewell. Yet we bank our relationship in the hands of guiltless hunger breaking us daily. Life is fruitless as long as man comes to die in his own sorrow. And sickness overshadows what and who we intend to be. I’m not bothered about your smothering laughter that would end up causing you problems without solution.

When trying to hold yourself together take a look at poetry of elegies and dirge. Siege of a safety unfolding the world from the miseries of unfortunate men. Question life from that man on the street begging for arms to fend for himself. Question life from the twisted eyes of that man who wears tattered thoughts climaxing into the abyss of the grave. Question life from things unseen and things seen from the mouth of those paupers beaten by hunger geared towards imperfection. Life can sometimes be biased treating us differently. Holding us unto death notes of want, different faces clamouring for redemption; redemption lost in the hands of hunger and agony.

How do you expect a hungry man to define hunger? How do you remove a bone from the mouth of a dog? Sometimes we do not wear our clothes to be beautiful or for the world to see how pretty we are but we wear it to cover our shameless stomach. We wear it to cover our maleness from disgracing us. We gather in the congregation to pray not because everyone cannot pray in his house but because the gathering of brethren is a source of relief to us. We see people drop their problems by the side of the road to dance along with the hope of picking those problems after the merriments are over. Such is life, such is the drowning part of our lives. When you behold a pauper, look into his eyes and split the tale therein into two and group them randomly, there are mysterious mysteries behind his prestigious laughter and sadness clothed with strength and courage. Such is life treating us like bones over and over and over again. We learn to wrap each other to our own warmth.

Why are some people poor and others rich? Why do some people have and others don’t have? Why do many have big houses and others don’t? When will I get to know the boundary between the rich and the poor? Why is life too biased? Why? From this flattering and honesty freedom giving, from this atmosphere where hostility is the abbreviation of hatred pocketed in the hands of hunger. From the onset, the obvious remains that we live to listen not of the echoes from the voice of the wind rather we bank on the nemesis that the world rests on us. Reset your mind and plan for another password.

The more we question life, the more we generate the best form of us. Although we might not get the answer to our questions, it seems so right to ask what killed your mother or father before it comes knocking on your door, wrapped in your skin like the flamboyant migration of your bodies from one form to another. Question life from the eyes or mouth of poor men and you will understand that life is made of two forms: one which drives back the future from the past and that which hangs spiritually in our lives without a word. Hence, we clamour for clarity of life from the twisted heart of men. Yet, we battle ourselves loaning a little fear into our curriculum of how life’s pages turn from white to black. We blackmailed a sculptured belief holding onto the river that joined to seas and to oceans. Life could be such a misery owing to the fact that sorrow is another woman without the fruit of the womb. Life is a miscreant of pain and hurt. Then, do we live it in greediness, cowardice and selfishness?

Sorrow is another woman without the fruit of the womb. Agony is another man without the knowledge of a woman. Dream is another boy leaving his mother’s arms without a goodbye. Emotion is another girl inviting boys to look into her thigh to see if they could see her lost father who got burnt penetrating into her. Where do broken dreams go? Does the wind ever have a wishful rest? Where does the sun sleep at night? Let’s meet again where broken dreams are carved so that we can rephrase our steps into a nemesis of you who betrayed your trust in the world.

John Chizoba Vincent

John Chizoba Vincent is a cinematographer, filmmaker, music video director, poet and a writer. A graduate of mass communication, he believes in life and the substances that life is made of. He has three books published to his credit which includes Hard Times, Good Mama, Letter from Home. For boys of tomorrow is his first offering to poetry. He lives in Lagos.