For Those Boys Who Created The Stars

June 25, 2018 Opinion , OPINION/NEWS

By

John Chizoba Vincent

If I didn’t return home with this broken thought from our forbearers, I would allow you to take a walk past memories to those nights we taught the sun how to shine at night without feeling guilty of betrayal; without making the moon feel as if he has no thought of its own. I left my voice at the back of the moon for its shameless cowardice had made the headlines for you to hear them again and again under the aging agony of our past. Why hold unto yourself craving for a love that never existed? Why tell yourself that marriage is not notorious to boys?

When I become one of those boys who named themselves after their fathers I will learn to bank on the favours of the world. When I become one of those boys who left their shadows to wander around, I will keep my working eyes alight to the sight of problems.

Hold this piece in your hands and measure your mistakes. Do not fear. Do not fear for those things said and those things done. Do not see empathy as loosely touted in the street. Do not say your names before the sun belches them out. Do not say how the stench in your father’s shrine smells of corpses because you would still take over from where he stopped. Do not let your dreams roam about. Do not let them slip away into the abyss.

I scribbled a part of me in this verse for you to read into the arms of the wind that turned you into song. Boys like us are breeze and wind and storm and murmured soft tones. One day, just one day our stars shall dance fervently on the faces of those that called us insanity. After all this passes away, I will write about you to the heavens, sample you in the street of the rising stars.

Do not hold me like a skeletal body. Hold me accountable for all that I have said. One day, you can only hear in your dreams and a being you can only see in your imagination will be me and your forefathers. I do not come to you by choice. I do not dodge your ghost to create abnormality before the world. If I could regenerate my strength and make a star out your smile, then, I will stand to collect and erase all that the earth has not planned for us. Do not break yourself into pieces, boys. Do not slay yourself to find peace in your tears. Do not ask the ground how she hides the secrets of the universe.

For this strolling message has dashed our sanity into the deepest part of our secret as boys. For this perfection of humility and egoism, we will gather atoms of truth from the figures of this world and build oceans and Scalate castle where dreams are created. Do not be afraid now and after the resurrection of your souls from this mess your parents created. Do not find hope in your agony, do not find solace in the arms of guilt. Do not water your plant in the night when all souls are sleeping. Dialogue with the wind to its whispers and voices echoing through the spaces where love and hatred crossed paths.

We may not be able to abundantly tell of you whenever we pick up a biro to write but when your smile is embodied into the air, let it be of love, not abandoned love. For this earth is a paradise to your thoughts and life. For this world is a space between your fingers. For this earth is a humble substitute between life and death. Don’t tell your generation that light is light nor tell them that death is darkness. We have researched the call of men to learn that there is white, black and grey trying to break between the spaces of warriors.

I am not perfect like my ancestors who made the Ukpo. I am not the man to stand here to mention the monitors that oversee the difficulties between our legs and thighs. I am not an orator or a curator. The world is a scary darkness I think you know. Your voice is its light. And how she builds shelter for broken souls should make you not find solace in your tears when you know they’ll haunt who you are.

Do not carry the world on your head. Do not love to a fault. Find love where love sounds not like a mirage. Mercy would be at the backing of your bodies in the tunnel of small traces. I will keep twisting this fact that life is wisdom from the esteem of immature documentaries till the people answer to the call in my eyebrows. Marry where you find love and trust. Keep tribalism away from your steps. Racism should be an enemy. Our father was slaughtered in the north because of it.

Keep favouritism in the shady ambience. Tomorrow is the hope and drive even if we fail to draft it on our palms but be assured that we are already made. Go to the garden where we spelt moments on the board of destiny, with the beauty of time and learn how to hold your destiny before you. Go to the market and learn more in footsteps; those planting and those scattering to gather again make up the world. I have taught the flowers how to carry my smell even in a graveyard. Few would understand this but few would buttress it into religious beliefs. And your shadows should teach you how to reflect my reflections in your heart.

I buried my eyes in yours to create another world, not like the one the world knows, but the one they have not seen. And my body, on the soil of your elegance to catch a glimpse of me, look at you in a mirror, look at you and you will see me standing between you and your shadows.

This will not be my last blood on paper for you. This won’t be my last thought for you boys. Learn to crawl out of your shells and sing in the tone of the moon and the stars and the wind, with the sun as your orchestra and bass line because every soul that leaves finds a place in the sky; not the grave where they told us dwells the spirit of our appealing ancestors. Boys, carve a new world around you where smoke and water stays together to create an arc of love.