Poetry

Fred Marie photo

By

John Chizoba Vincent

Of War, Cinematography and Memories

Capture those laughing spirits,

Let’s make history and memories of them.

Let’s table them before the August moon to tender our apologies to the rainbow of time past.

Capture the fragment of this imaginative blood,

Let’s make a threnody of sadness & pain.

The gospel must be a false doctrine in the eyes of grandma

Cos’ she pocketed her frustrations even at death.

Her coins fell & the wind took them away.

Of war,

Because we were made of war & death.

Of Cinematography,

Because we captured every moment in tears.

Of memories,

Because that is where life started talking to us.

This is not us in dreams & obsession.

We may not be cream camera for photographers;

But “cinematography is a lifestyle”

Should remain a ‘Book of memories’

Of peace & solidarity of imageries.

Benjamin Cheta Okam resurrected this

part of life in biro of white ink in remembrance-

Of the hysteria that led every of our past

To hell;

Because home is made of pot bellied

politicians with bloody lies that flow

Like milk and honey

In a land of war left for us to capture.

And Capture the ghost of that bride

Whose soul left her husband to

a cemetery of Hope:

a graveyard of dead sisters;

recently, we saw a story in a boy’s eyeshadow

We scripted it into sorrow & agony;

Apocalypse!

No character will survive all our plagues!

None! Armageddon of life!

Tell the director that we see no more legs

of unfortunate cities in his minor casts.

We see no more of dialogues cooked in liberty of hysterical laughter.

Movie is between war and memories

ignited into climax.

War blown into air like blue kisses;

Memories noted like the pages of Nigerian corruption.

Cinematography is writing in a country music,

Depicting the ill of the society

but dreams are shattered daily

Dried into chaff but movies never show them

We have movies that end up showing sex

Of dreadful destiny in bleak promises

Confusing the eyes of our young ones warring themselves.

Of war, cinematography & memories,

We’ll come home to hold ourselves together to tell old stories bottled by our histories.

This Song Is Too Heavy For My Lips To Wear

I’ll bury my lines in this formless elegy,

I fear the lines behind scene than the one in it,

Why do the grave’ mouth open  each time our mother calls for a festival of peace & wine?

Why is death so weak that it kills and run?

Many lips have songs that never came out

& this were the tale told majestically in pains

of how you fought death to stay alive…

but the music was channeled wrongly,

Why do we have to wear this sorrow this time when the pleasures flow eastward?

Why do we have to write agony on the blank pages of time behind the future?

sometimes we remember ourselves in the dream not yet born,

yet, we have to visit places where legs are not allowed.

The other times we allow our shadows to bury our wandering thoughts in tears.

Howbeit you left when the sun is yet to shine?

Let’s see your palms & brace up freedom;

for freedom is the call duty of jolted triumphs.

You are still awake, right? You are still living

Cos your breathing treatment of kindness

are the testament of brotherhood in blood!

Humanity is not too hollow to fight for you,

Heroes are not  born false, you one of them.

No human is hollow in thought for your kind

But Let’s sheath our knives,

those long drawn knives,

smoking with gore against death;

For we shall still meet to archive our embrace,

Sun our very emotions & feelings

& make dreams a stepping stone cold to get home.

till our blood connects to the dust of the African heroes reborn,

the only prophecy told in our history shall be void.

till eternity comes, we hope to still keep you in our soul purchasing freedom and equality.

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.