Freedom

I want to be free to live,
A life free from difficulty,
A life with no tragedy

I want to be free to walk,
walk and never be stopped
Free to walk away from that sin that enslaved me,
Free to confront the devil that estranged me

I want to be free to speak,
Oh let my tongue leak, the truth.
I want to be free to spill out words that heal,
Words that plant and uproot futile roots

I want to be free to see,
See beyond diverse challenges,
See an adventure in the midst of peril

I want to be free to smile,
A smile that brightens and brings joy to a troubled mind and uplifts the weary heart

I want to be free to dream,
Dreams that are not assaulted by ferocious nightmares,
Dreams that give the assurance of a bright future

I want to be free to give,
Give without demanding to receive
Free to give myself up, just as Christ did for us

I want to be free to worship,
Acknowledging him who has dominion and lordship

I want to be free to love,
Unconditionally, exclusively and indefinitely

I want to be free to be the creators poet,
Free to get my papers wet,
With blue blood as they surge freely through my pen

I want to be free to write my piece,
Without chaos afflicting my peace

I want to be free to be the “me” that I’m supposed to be,
Not regarding people’s thoughts and opinions of me

I want to be free from pressures,
Free from peer pressures that accelerates my blood pressure
Free from living to measure up and forgetting his “treasure up”

I want to be free from the shadows of my past,
Free to take off this obfuscating mask
I know I committed crimes and crossed lines but I want to be free to bask in his ever redeeming light,
Free to actualize that in Christ, I am worth a Jew’s eye

I want to be free
According to God’s will
Flourishing like the flowers
Gushing with full strength like the waters
And as a tree planted near the rivers whose root spreads across like the garment of a diva

I want to be free expanding in knowledge
thrilling in the realm of possibilities
healing the broken souls with those words gifted from above

So, I desire to be free
Free from the seal of fear and jest
Free from imperfections and wrong decisions
Free the rain of confusion that overwhelms the kingdom on the inside,
Free from the floods of lust that empties grace
And takes away God’s face
I need to be free!
clothed with righteousness on the race
Nurtured on the way
Living to become my very best

Princess
The Alchemist
© 2019.

Life After Death

It is so ridiculous
How we fear death
A riddle, cool course
Why we want to live on earth

Life is to death
As death is to life
Man is to earth
As earth is to man

It’s OK we die
Because it’s a metamorphosis for one to live
At some point, we will say goodbye
To the old hives, we’ve lived

Failure could be death
Challenges could be death
Depression could be death
But the ability to overcome, prompts a new life

Definitely we will die someday
And there awaits us another life
The believers call this eternal
When we shall become immortal
But until we die, can we live such

Adethatwrites
© 2018

SUICIDE

I’ve written lots of things and deleted it,
I’m short of letters, talkless about words,
I’ve crumpled the pages of my notebooks,
written lots of doodles, smile at one minute,
And then cry at the next,
But now I’m just typing,

I smile at things that make me happy,
I frown at uncertainties,
Should I? Shouldn’t I? Can I? What if?
Questions…….
Afraid to take a decisive step,
I sit and sit,
Becoming a smiling mannequin,
For all and sundry,

I strive to make everyone smile,
All the time,
At the expense of my piece of mind,
Hey you, Be this……….
You there, Be that…….
Come on, I think you’re better this way……
On and on, they say,
Till my world spirals and gets sucked up in “voices”,

“Voices”,
Till I became dead to the VOICE,
Seriously, I can’t even hear HIM no more,
I’m at the end of the rope,
Teetering on the brink of sanity,
Toying with, no, relishing the thought of going over the edge,
Falling down, down, down and down,
Smiling at the very thought of it,
Dying,

Dying??
Why?
For whom?
To what end?
To punish who?
The voice said.
Myself, I reply.
Myself, for being a fool.
For hating myself.
For being a piece of dead leaf
Being tossed to and fro by the tumultuous wave.
For not loving myself., I answered,

And then what next, He asked?
That, I don’t have the answer to,
I’d be dead already,
Okay, you worthless piece,
Since that’s how you see yourself,
That’s what I’ll call you,
You were not put in the world to just breathe in its air,
Drink is water, eat it’s food, enjoy its holidays,
Spend its monies, and just give up like that,

You exist, you don’t just live,
Love yourself, not just others,
Don’t exchange peace of mind with piece of friends,
It ain’t worth it,
You are worth more,
Ah! So much more than rubies,
So much more than money,
Because of just one thing,
I love you!
So, get down from that cliff,
Sit down, breathe 3,2,1, there you are!
Stand up, dust your shoes,
The world is waiting for you!

Emenike Chinwendu

© 2018

See

The morning, cool and convenient enough for a park. Buses parked in order of arrangement as passengers grooved in. There I was, patiently sitting in an opened bus void of passengers. Straight towards me came a young girl, couldn’t be more than ten years. Saliva dripping from her mouth, wet hands bagged a polythene bag as she begged. Her voice, faintly blocked and salient and her hands stretched horizontally. 
Perhaps,a sort of childhood illness or an accident or maybe a birth abnormality could be the reason for the saliva dripping mouth and voice quality loss. 

Away from me she went, towards the market lined up with shops. With same pose and similar gestures, she begged as she strolled down hawkers, buyers and passers by. Quite noticeable were her feet. One of it, swollen and partially bent towards the east. Lifting both legs was an obvious difficulty for her. I hoped silently, maybe, just maybe, she would find succour.

Even closed eyes see the needs and struggles of these not so fortunate children, but attitudes towards them becomes a choice we make. 

Every child deserves more than just existing or surviving, but really living. Sadly, comfortable living is unheard of for such kids. A beautiful future is only actualized in their day dreams. Their reality and major concern is a means of surviving daily, securing head spaces at night and food eaten enough to hawk the next day.

You can lend that hand of love. Hospitable hands of faith for their survival. A heart so big to accommodate hawking children and young adults. A heart that sacrifices for the needs of a child who daily dreams of the classroom, but finds himself hawking from sunrise to sunset each day in sweaty rags. Tomatoes and pepper sold in the morning, vegetables and fresh fish takes it’s turn in the afternoon, while banana and groundnut rounds up major sales in the evening. 

Let your heart see the tears and unspoken dreams of these young ones. And may your heart stretch your hand to meet their needs.

  • Michelle Okonicha

Jesus be REAL!

Pour me a drink He said.

I ain’t got time for y’all Jews she said.

Oops if I were you I’d be asking me for a drink He said.

Now there you go thinking you’re better off than our fathers she said.

Well I got water that  will give them water-well companies a run for their money He said.

Oh really? She exclaimed Well can I get some? She asked.

Go call your boo He said.

What you all up in my business for? I ain’t got none She said.

You are correct cos you’ve had 5 and the one you’re with ain’t yours He said calmly.

What the? You must be prophet! Can I holla at you for a Moment?  We have church at the mountain cathedral but y’all Jews and the like say we all have to get to Jerusalem before we can have church. What’s up with that? She asked.

I’m gonna be real with you, God is done with all them physical locations. These days, any man that wants to worship can do so wherever he is in spirit and in truth.  and that’s what’s up. He said

 

  • Ezeonyeka Godswill (2017)

#TheConversation

#FreestyleFriday

OUR MULTI STORIED WORLD

“Eche! True! (Places finger on tongue and points to heavens) I didn’t intend posting it but because you already said I would, I said ‘what’s there? Just post it after all there is an insight'” THIS IS ME SPEAKING

See what happened.. Me, Dare, Tochuku, Uzor, Eche and two other classmates were waiting in front of the library to write the ‘famous’ CEDR cbt exam in the library.

(CEDR- centre for development and research- exam has always been famous before it became multiple choiced cbt-computer based test- coz of the amount of F’s they gave but now it is famous coz on this day of our exam, first batch out of five which were scheduled for 2pm started by 4pm and so by the time it got to 2nd and 3rd batches, people were fainting. )

Okay.. so we were waiting oo..then I heard one department called up..it was sooo weird.. very different from mine..i was just wondering how two people will be in same school but have drastically different experiences and knowledge. I said it and Eche naaa said… lemme not say what he said.. ehee but you see..it’s crazy how we can’t have same experiences. How neither me nor you can be born into Pete Edochie’s home and be born into Will Smith’s home and still be born into our home.

It’s crazy that we can’t attend King’s college and FGC okposi and urban girls’ sec sch and still attend the secondary school we attended. We can’t school at UNN, and University of Texas and Ida polytechnic, Kogi and still school in the higher institution we were or are or will be schooling at.

We cannot study architecture and engineering and theatre arts and still study the course we are studying. We cannot be born in May and be born in January and still be born in our own month.

We each have individual lives, individual experiences, and in summary individual stories. Lol. This causes all the difference in the world so we want to know what it feels like to be this or that and live here or there and become this or that and have this or that. But I don’t think it will make any sense if it were that way.. I mean all these differences make life spiced up and not boring. It makes us able to have lots of stories to hear and be able to tell our own.. and one thing is constant, in each person’s story, there are tragic and there are comic moments.

The best we can do is to live our one lives well.. make the best of our own stories and see them to their end.. I know and not just think this time around that we can actually better our stories by featuring in other people’s, we feature atimes without consciously knowing but we can also feature consciously, show up sometimes in the middle of a scene and change the course, of course into a better outcome.

This is our multi storied world.. we should each live the one life we have.

#grins