Category: Poems

Jesus

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He, the first born of the spirit was born in a manger
Raised with his people yet considered stranger
Jesus in God’s sight, is considered all that is right

He took whiplashes
That healing be given in all places, races and classes
He at Galilee’s road
Was broken that we be made whole
That we be saved souls
For our salvation was always his main goal.

Jesus was bartered bruised and crushed
All while led to an old rugged cross
To have nails impale his body
That we may become his body
And at the 9th hour, when hope had diminished
He declared it is finished.

For three days , he launched a one man raid.
Defeating devil, demons and death in a perpetual victory parade
And at the third day when he was raised
The power of death was as empty as his grave.

Brown Ini
© 2022

The Roots of God Trees

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Sticking with an article series is pretty tasking. But then, it was always a task

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.

Today we continue the experience of poems from June the 2th. Calm down, it’s from 2021. The topic was ROOTED. Its not that the topic was rooted in any particular thing.


At 7:12 PM, Nonsi John wrote:


From experience, I have found
That art teachers who turned to teaching
Having failed to make it in their art.
Can be either very good and effective
Or just bitter and dangerous.

Do with that what you will.

Stay rooted.


So, I dont really know what to make of that. We do need our art teachers. But I guess, its all in the challenge for the baby artiste. Up next at 7:22 PM, It was I, The Niel:


Hope, in God is good
Word doses at dusk
There is more to brew
There’s kabashing to do
I have written more books
Yeah so far so good
Some times I’m in a mood
I word paint it real good
But it is better to pray
Than you whine and complain

But I do both, hoping that God will rain food
Even when he does I still brood
I might act ghetto, I have left the hood
So far so good, so far so good



And a continuation at 7:30 PM:


Dip deep
Like a whale shark did
In the soil of my being
Bearing fruit that he did
Like a root for my feed
Feel my branches and leaves
I am rooted in him
Who can separate me
From the life of this tree
From the love of Popsi
In the name of these three
I have strength ignoring
the clashing, wind hissing,
reckoning “God pass them”
in tandem, uproot them
Engraft them
Deep, into the Deep.


And nonstop, I went at it again at 7:42 PM:


Ahem

Listen here!
I have found from my experiences
There a line between entertainment and evangelism
Are you just fact stating?
Painting syllogisms?
No, I don’t even see that in your so-called art
I’m throwing shields up at your two-tongues fart

But shoot away

And root away

I’ve had my say

I’m on my way


Something must have triggered me, because I shot off some more poetry at 7:52 PM:



Mazi Udeh,

Allow me to reply – Mmm? -to what you havu said.

*Clears throat

Ehnnn

Mazi Udeh, havu you seen thisi Christi that I go on about?

Adim rooted ka Jị nọrọ n’ime àlà.
Ọ́ sị na ọ nyere m ndụ na aga
Onwere ihe ga a mata m n’aka ya?


Yes, that was an Igbo freestyle. I feel like Natural english speakers betray their heritage by doing everything in English. But thats a story for another… Like, who is gonna write a poem in Ibibio or Kanuri or Fulani, these days, when every body is speaking English?

Up next, Eremi doesnt fall shot. Here she was at 7:55 PM:


Roots!
Like little veins
Untreated, rugged, uncomely
They’re like underdogs
They do the dirty work
To keep the plant flirtatious

Roots!
Tender, they look
Fragile they seem
Yet breaking through earth’s darkness
They build the tunnel
From which life fills the plant
Bearing proudly
Their marks of struggles and victories.
As scars upon their little arms

Roots!
With strength enough to hold the earth
While maintaining peaceful discourse
With Earth, seed, leaves, trunk, branches, foliage and fruits
The strong hold that holds strong
the giant above the earth

Roots!
Their journey in search of water
Keeps the bamboo ever green
Their journey in search of depth
Keeps the oak steady for the wind
By the redwood, they teach that neglecting depths
To reach for the sky
Will cause a great fall
When the winds fight.

Root!
I guess they stan functionality
So even when you eat them
Or medicate with them
Be grateful to God who has made them Perfect for support,
for growth
for healings
and for teachings.

© PEARLYTHOUGHTS


A lot to take in, as usual.

At 9:10 PM, the Lady Damaris:


*ROOTED*

They thought
I was buried
But the joke is on them
Cos I was planted


I had lost everything
The flesh fruit of my accomplishments were long gone
The seed of my soul was all I had left
And I was cast down
I couldn’t sink any lower than this

Little did I know that I fell in the right place
I fell on the soil of his Grace
And in that dark place his mercy revived me
His love activated the depths of my spirit
The light of the Son was all I needed

To rise
And rise
High above sin level
Now I’m standing tall
And growing taller
Rooted and unshaken
Fearless and unmovable
They can’t understand it
They thought I was buried
Little did they know
I was planted.


Pretty conventional thought forms, I would say. At 9:12 PM, our barrister, Funke stepped in with this:


As I watch an angry man lose control
Vandalizing another man’s property, two in a roll
Sir…majority chorused
“Just say sorry”
It will save you and us a touching story
Two angry men
One wouldn’t say sorry because he said he didn’t create the scratch
On the worn out car
The other claimed to have been hit
So who is right?
Food for thought!
My pound of flesh I must have
Was the inaudible voice
Yet visibly audible we saw this thoughts
Two side mirrors in a roll Indeed
Were rooted out
Flung out into the Bush at once!
Mine oh mine!
Pause….
The words of Christ came flashing back
Every seed that my father has not planted shall
Be rooted out

Anger…oh destructive anger
Pride…the I am better than you type
Malice…Envy…bitterness…fear the list goes on
Including that which comes to your mind!
Help us Lord… oh Lord we cry!
From this little foxes spoiling our vine
Let them be rooted out- and stay rooted out

How does the story end .. .you say?
Ask me for the tale another day


And that was the last poem in a line of…splendid word families




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:
Nonso John
Niel Quchi
Eremi
Damaris
Funke

SCREENS

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There used to be a time
When we could see other people’s eyes
And wonder at the marvel of God
Somehow we got bored

We hold up glasses to see through
To mask our blindness to see the truth
It is no wonder we want to go bigger and brighter
The façade of sight needs all the detail to seem true

One day we would make a name for ourselves
Caged in a sphere of flat screens and power pixels
We would revel in our blinded solitary prison
A lonely community of cyborgs existing

– Ezeonyeka Godswill
(c) 2022

What do you need a map for?

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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.


Today, we take a trip to June the 25th, 2021. At 5:05 AM, Dr King broke a 40-hour spell of silence, which in itself was quite the anomaly. Here is Dr. King with Seed power. I doubt it was a freestyle:

SEED POWER



If I could
Drive your dreams
To the moon
So you see that its reality
Breaks the bound of gravity

If I could
Wear your smile
On a monster frown
To model the comfort
It gives to a warring heart

If I could 
Shout with a mute
To show the deafness
Of a voice that roars
Without insight 

If I could
Live without a breathe
To reveal the deadness
Of a being
With no purpose

If I could
Think without my mind
To display the madness
Of a creature 
That denies it creator

Hmmmmm
Oh! I wish you could see
The giant in the ant
The forest in the shoot
The Oaks in the acorn

In your action, the world
Bows to the law of motion
The “lit” lies in a bit
If you believe
In the power of your seed


                       -King Uwe


Yeah, he seemed to be consumed by some message that he needed to pass across. Do you think he did so, effectively? Either way, at 7:09 AM, I: The Niel Quchi, officially opened the #freestylefriday at 7:10 AM with the Topic “Journey”.

At 7:16 AM, I launched the first spurt:

March past shit on the road
Forgive as I was told
Yeah you gotta stay in God-mode
Mercy never gets old
Oh my confidence is passed the past successes I have owned
Imma keep on walking, preaching Jesus to the souls
Bused to work and back again, on day I’ll be drove
But grateful I remain until my default mode is love


Going to another city
But my fellow around me
Saved to save, ọ́ chọ̀ kaambili
Holy Spirit sound in me

Now, yesterday we saw the freestyles of the 11th of June, and on that day, something happened that I didn’t speak of. The arrival of Jemcy. Having come on a few days before, it was refreshing to read Jemcy at  9:59 AM:

Keep running
I know the path is narrow
Filled with fearful arrow
But I would be there with you leading


Shift your gaze off looming darkness
Can’t you see my brooding spirit?
Shake of the fear
And have faith in me


Oh honey,
This journey is with a price
Not of earthly money
But to a life of eternal glory
©Jemima Joseph


Yeah, the kind of thing you’d write to a topic such as “Journey” and you’re a Christian writer. Also as delightful, this is one of those special freestyles because it was written by Ifiok. Ifiok and I wrote The Chosen reviews presently. But she heads that endeavor. Here she was at 10:22 AM:

Dear Abba,

This journey started with you leaving the 99 to look for me. 

Oh yes, I rejected you the first time, and even after a hundred rejections, you kept coming back. 

I thought the rejection would weaken your resolve but I had never met anyone so strong-willed. 

Then I thought, I must be really worth it.


Very intimate piece, and I’m sure these pieces have ministered to someone somewhere. The reason, I thought, the dates and times should be written is that I want you to think back on what it is you were doing at the time that this poems were written, and just juxtapose the poem against that context. Does the poem have additional meaning now? Ebube continued the beautiful freestyling at 12:55 PM in her “Ghetto Sister G.O. vibe”:


Like an essential oil wafts through the nostrils breathe crafted genesis out of nothing, made a demi-god with all it requires to meander through the genesis of a cold, cobwebbed wrecking cave until gold locked in the web are harnessed triggering shock waves 


Kai….dem no born you to give up, as the current of this life’s ocean journeys from one end of the hemisphere to another without a millisecond to grab a t-fare, trade fair the loss will be gross if in all these turbulence salvation is lost.


Salvation is gain
Salvation is pain endured to get us sonship, our ticket to sanity in this ship called life bound to capsize outside Christ, intense cravings out to steal our integrity and seal our fate in hell and the love for the world rather than word grows day after day.


You may fall a million times and foots will ache in this journey but trade not our SALVA-GAIN.


Oh Wow…this next spurt reminds me that I have not seen Tunde Micheal’s writing this year. Note to self…

Here is Tunde Micheal at 1:12 PM:


The journey came from unconscious to conscious,

Came from from the raging noises of sea to a still whisper of peace,
The journey started from while I was yet a sinner, my dad kept calling me Bishop,
Deep was I into doing dirt,
Dead was I to sin,
You kept calling,
But how was I to know?
Till at the lifting up of your name that came by melody,
This song of triple parts came as power unto salvation for me,
Wrought and became a mirror before me,
I saw the beauty, bad and the beast,
All that I was becoming,
Then, it was clear enough that I was not living the one who Christ breathe in and blessed and bled for,
Right there, I made the sharp lift from fall.

The journey,
The strong can’t walk therein.
No map can contain this path where peace is.

And ofcourse, one of my favorites, Eremi at 1:20 PM. Like, the poems were coming back to back to back:


“You are so intimately aware of me, Lord. You read my heart like an open book and you know all the words I’m about to speak before I even start a sentence! You know every step I will take before my journey even begins.”
Psalms 139:3‭-‬4 TPT




My days before they started counting
My thoughts before I started thinking
My words before I started speaking
My emotions before I started revealing
My friends before I started making
My course before I started charting
My wealth before I started counting
My desires before I started wishing
My life before I started living

You knew it all
From start to finish
‘In your book, they were all written
Days fashioned for me when as yet there were none’

So, who else would be my guide
If not you
My Guardian-God


See her, she started with a Bible verse… How led. Well, I had been watching, reading, and after Eremi at 1pm…there just was no one writing, until I began again at  7:10 PM:

Walking to the few chores I have in the future

80/20 vision i adjust to user features
We are Igbo but we chose being eternal
Where I’m going he told to stay recalling.
I marvel,
When they read me I’ll be way past what I wrote since
All this in preparation for the fruit of my jeans
Daughter Sonny you can tell I told her everything
Son is Yeshua, I’m a poet, he is privileged
We did it

But I woke up in my body
Five hours after I slept at the party
They said they wanted graphic so I gave em jagbajantis
Code it I did not mean
I’m divided Greenwich
Should I stop or start or continue stopping or starting or continuing where I’m going?
Of course we move, there’s a level I’m ascending?


And like a reenacted play, no one wrote again until 11:43 PM, when Ade, my Guy wrote this:

I wonder if Abraham ever felt like this,
Tired, frustrated and lost,
Somewhere between hearing God’s voice,
Somewhere in the wilderness lending his ears to navigate his way
To finally getting to his promise land and being the Man who started Faith, 


Your words never really painted doubt or fear in Abraham’s picture,
So, Lord, I ask why the only palpitations my heartbeats,
Are percussions of fear and doubt,
If I am from his loins, then why I am plagued,
Or better put; the black sheep that didn’t inherit his faith from His genes,


My legs are quaking to the tremors this path presents,
These weights are way beyond what they were built for,
My heart no longer longs for hope’s touch,
She seems unreachable with each passing day,
My hands have held your promises for as long they can, 
Knees dropping, tears washing off my face,
My lungs holding on to the last bag of air…

At this crossway, I pray, Lord,
Let me find my north,
There’s nothing to go back to,
My strength fails me but can still go one trip,
My ears are weak but still yearn for your voice,
 My eyes are dim but can still pick you from the crowd,
All I ask is for You to hold me by the hands; never letting go,
I am burdened and don’t know how to pray again,
So take it from hear Lord and lead me,
And I will sheepishly follow You,
I can’t make this journey on my own!


And that was how it went down on that day. What would you write under the same topic?

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:

Niel Quchi

Tunde Micheal

Eremi

Ebube

Ifiokabasi

Ade