Hello, My name is Niel and these are the ChristaPoet Freestyle Sessions. This year, ChristaPoet wants to give you a special perspective to our freestyles. At first, some of these poems were published as stand-alone pieces. But in actuality, each poem is an untitled part of a freestyle session. Each freestyle session is given a topic for the poems to address.



On this particular day, April 9th 2021, freestyles started at 4:00 PM, under the topic “Holy”. I think it’s important to note that the writers and Editors of CAP are mostly working class people. Some of us attended the same university and know each other’s styles and historical progressions. And now we have each grown to take up deeper levels of our careers and deeper bonds with each other’s writing.

I kicked off the session at 4pm with this:

Busy Friday, up for air like I was diving
Made in Heaven and I am chosen like Joe Biden
God
Taught my hands to war and gave me tools for thriving
That’s how God do, I cannot be shy too

Yes he said he would do it
And I’m trusting him through it
All I needed was light, when I saw it I knew it
Old and dead was I, but His Word is renewing
He gave me Life after Earth, and the power for during

Set apart now, yes, you can call me Holy
Kingdom focused like a soldier when I tell his story
P
I’m past tense, and now I’m comfy with evangelism
And I don’t wait for Easter to tell the world Christ is reason

Okay, so there are times and seasons that Sitz im Leben these sessions. For example, this set is from the Easter period of 2021. A lot of times, some of us would simply draw lyrics from the context, and transpose that with the topic at hand. But some us, like me, would ignore the topic mostly or adhere entirely to it. This brings us to the next freestyle.

Nonso John, in my opinion, can’t be said to really be freestyling. He’s too practiced for that. He would write, edit, restructure, all that. At the end, his freestyles would be…

Just check this out; coming in at 6 minutes after 5pm, Nonso John :

I’m human.
Trust me, I am.
I wear my pants one leg at a time.
And, believe it or not.
I cry. I fall. Yes, I even fart.
Ew.

Sometimes I feel worthless.
Like collateral damage. Expendable.
But, come on. All said and done.
We all know an Old Shot’s a Nigger.
Once every day; twice on Sundays.

Barbarians and Predators
See them threaten to Terminate us.
But as imperfect as we are,
Our God don’t use no erasers.

Perfection is not me.
I’ve never claimed it.
But, He who called me?
Come on. Dude’s on Fleek.
Faithful. Holy.

For me, the level of perfection, is a mixture of annoying and intimidating. But that’s our Nonso John. And he was probably trying to stay simple the whole time. Either way, I, The Niel Quchi, continued the spree at 8:01pm:

I’ve
Long time been a faith fool
Grateful being saved, Dude
Living dead like Voodoo
But I’m just a branch he bears fruit through

And I fall sometimes just like the price of things
When i don’t recall the price of him
But he’s faithful as he’s always been
But he’s faithful as he’s always been

Amen. Very brief and to the point; but then, I wouldn’t say that this followed the topic. Xhika came up next… I forgot that this is not WhatsApp. So, in Christapoet, there is a lady known as Chika St. Davnique. I have to restrain myself from telling you her nickname within CaP. I spell her name with an ‘X’ where the ‘C’ is. Here is St. Davnique at 8:48pm:

I’ve not known many things
The result being many thorns
Many torns
Many turns

The world isn’t ideal you see,
We sea-saw every now,
Again,
Between here and hiding
Between there and finding.

And aren’t we all fake fools?
Confessing ideals but rooted in our reels
Our reals
Our ins
Our inch shallow depths

Aren’t we?
Hoping to high heavens that a faith full God stays real.

Stays reeled in
Riveted on showing us what’s real in us.
Even if we never find real in us.

I’ve not known many things,
But I’ve known Him to be true.
To be ALL, absent none,
Faithful and holy.

Yeah, a testimony of her experience of God’s holiness. Though I feel it is kind of normal to attribute holiness to God, in comparison to poetizing the concept in and of itself. But truly, what better description of Holiness is there than Yahweh himself. I came through again at a minute after 9pm. I remember I was walking to Mindsmith’s house as I wrote this…Yeah, I like to walk and write:

I passed by a guard sitting unguarded;
Who starts life without the One whence life started?
Giving birth in a trance don’t make you transparent
Saying “Apparently” won’t make you a parent
But I think the ball is passed
Textbook poetry is fast
Four lines the structure
If it was on Twitter, who’d follow Instructions

And next was the very beautiful Zoe Ziva. I think Zoe should be at least a year old in CaP by the time of this article. Here she goes, on “Holy”, nine minutes later, at 9:10pm:

First created as dust, with the gene of him who failed, I looked at myself as worthless and the least of righteous like, even if I tried my best to be the “most righteous” it was like a filthy rag?
I gave up!

But before I was through, He tapped me and said He’ll rather be the One to give up His life just so I can be recreated no longer by dust but by Breath(The Spirit)

And He did.
On the cross He whispered “It is Finished”

So there! I was created a new being and Gene, no longer traced to dust but now to The One who recreated me.

So when the devil tried to deceive me telling me I’m not worth it and good enough,
He tapped me to remind me; and all I could hear was:

Faithful, Holy.

I like that her poem spurt was inherently evangelische. I was writing all the whole, in the background, still walking. So at 9:26pm, I wrote:

Up the hill to Smith’s I walk
NEPA’s taken light ofcourse
But i won’t call them unfaithful
Because they get no faith from us

I have found I have tailor my ways
So that nothing takes the time I need for giving him praise
Can you just imagine who was giving us chase
He whose words freestyled ants and milky ways

Would you look at that?! Beautiful right? And at 9:50pm, Eremi struck the last chord of the day:

Yesterday was quite cloudy
It felt like the travelling rain
Decided to stop at my terrain to greet
But it didn’t
Flashes of lightning like swords fight pushed though the thick black clouds
It was an intentional scare I thought
And my thoughts slept with me

Now I’m thinking about it
How is a God whose voice is louder than the thunder speak so softly
That you could hear distinctly in stillness?
I remembered a time
I also wondered what lights really is
You know
Stepping into that flash of light as in the lightning
Light in light?
No shadow of turning?
How is that even possible?
How will light so fill a place
That it will cast no shadow

Hold it! What could Holy mean?
All white, flurry, smells like sweets?
Holy!
Set apart!
Yes, I later learnt what it meant
Separated for the divine
Who is actually The Vine
The one from whom we got our alias – the Branches

I was told that the Vine isn’t just a fruit tree
That it’s a tree that creeps
Better put infiltrate
It takes over
Just give it time
It’s so beautiful that after it’s done with the host
All you can see is vine
Branches faithful to the course
Actually bring forth the fruits
Occupy till I come
For you are a chosen generation
A holy priesthood
They are the ones
That become the Light in the light
The ones that there is also found no shadow of turning
God is light, in Him there’s no darkness
You are of God Little Children
The glory of the vine had made us one
As they are one
Abiding in Him as He is in the Father

How did I start this gist?
I hope it still rains today
Who knows it could make me think of another gist tomorrow.

And that concluded a beautiful session of really nice pieces. What do you think of each poem?


I believe that if you had read any of these poems on their own, you would get a part of the picture. Now you see them together, I think it’s a more wholesome picture. Tell us what you think, and see you next time.

Authors:
Zoe Ziva
Chika St. Davnique
Eremi
Nonso John
Neil Quchi