Element of Freedom
Ask your mother how your father
Was sold yesterday to the hands of
righteous death, curling in fearful fist.
His stomach was empty with a widened
wild hunger and she left him to die.
Ask her of your name "Kamchetanna".
Ask her of your sisters and brothers sold
into slavery before you were born.
She has a tale to tell of you in her mouth,
Let not this song split from my mouth
like the old Imo and Abia...
For the love of yesterday when we danced
For the craving eyes of another past generation
Freedom that calls has no guilt to kill
Freedom that speaks has no envy but
Element like the gathering of the clouds in summer
Like the chirping of the winter birds in the air
Like the waving hands of the hibiscus flowers
I have no bed that calls for absence of a body
Ask your mother for the freedom to explore
See yourself by yourself; for it's been long
You saw yourself yourself without a mirror
For winds will slide no more into your thought
Rays of sunlight brighten your smile again
Those dots of thin fragment substances of your laughter
Could stand in between the night of motherhood
And bound that exist between mother and daughter...
Ask your mother what killed your father
before another mistake creep in like a leper
With a burning breast of pocketing darkness
Welcomes you again.
©John Chizoba Vincent
From_A_Pen_Refusing_Frustration
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