NewStats: 3,263,872 , 8,181,701 topics. Date: Sunday, 08 June 2025 at 01:10 PM 6wi57

HANG NO TEARS HERE, BOYS.

Do not hang memories on my shadow!
do not home to yourself!
Let the bed feel your absence on its
warmth with lurking ion interwoven.
Do not hang your thoughts here, boys,
Lest you burn yourself into ashes of Eden.

Do not hang tears on my eyes now!
For the productivity of sin is in death
&the genocide here are the whole of
abessive cruelty found in your eyes,
help me gather your roaming shadows,
for the feast of this land is the call
you hold on the dawn of a sudden dew.

Do not look the sun on the face with fear!
an unbroken chain of verses from book
of colours termed men racism of the earth.
this is how society raised you with gap
of saddened life & gory detailed miseries & your father told you that Africa is noble,
a lie which made the birds went into labour.

hang no secret here, boys, not in here!
Hang no clothes here, boys, end this pity.
My head is too weak to defend you;
For my mouth is too slippery to speak
of the evil your mothers committed...
For my legs are too defeated to walk down
memory lanes of the African sins.

This is how Africa raised you in her land,
She made you look like favorable flowers,
She made you look like desirable foetus,
like tamed lions & rejected pleasures...
like abadoned sweet savoured melodies!
hang no thought on my head, spirited boys.
Go, go on, fight your ownself & gain voices.

This madness pointed the accusation
finger & it'll end with a voice like yours.
hang no tears here on my statues,
Go out there and make yourself a god to yourself before the moon peeps again.
Let me be a stream to your cackling feelings
Whose time has no space for spirits bearing life behind the future scenes of boys.

©John Chizoba Vincent
#The_Boy_Hero

“A boy’s story is the best that is ever told”. Charlse Dickson

The society does not expect you to laugh, cry, show your feelings and remain a boy. The society sees you as a robotic Human who shows no feelings. It expects you to remain alive not to share your problems and thoughts and waekness with your neighbours.
The evil of being a BoyChild is that no one cares about your weaknesses and insecurities and fears. No one cares about how much you doubt yourself, they all believe that you can make it through because you are a boy. They believe you don’t need help from any of them because you are a boy. They believe that you are too strong to be asked ‘How are you coping? ‘ this is what the society made the BoyChild look like.
Being a BoyChild, the society sees you as super hero, a hero that don’t need to laugh at all times, super hero that don’t need to cry when you suppose to cry; a super hero that is not suppose to show any act of weakness. You don’t have to show how emotional you are. How the society has treated you because you are a man. You don’t have to show your feelings or express yourself in many ways because you are a man. The society made this and many more. This evil has been ed down from one generation to another that it has becomes a norm to some culture.

And this is not what I believe in, no, my boy needs to grow up in a society that has respect for the BoyChild. A society where boys are not seen as super hero. Where a mother in the kitchen won’t be waiting or looking for her daughter that went to market to buy some things to come back and wash the plate in the kitchen. My boys needs to grow up in a society that permits or allows him to laugh, cry, smile, dance around and still remain a boy. My boy needs to grow up in an African society where no one will look down on him figuratively. They won’t see him as a woman when he tells of his weakness.

Why would you have a son and still look for someone to assist you in the kitchen? Why? Who else are you looking for when you have no girl?

So the GIRLCHILD is told not to allow any Uncle touch her Vag*na but what did you tell the BOYCHILD about his Pen*s? You told the girl that she must take good care of herself so that she will see a good husband, what did you tell the BOYCHILD about looking good? You also told the girl to cover her self properly while sitting down, but you see the boys Pen*s dangling here and there as he walks naked and you never told him to look for a cloth to cover his unclothedness! Is this not evil against the male?

“No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone” Oscar Wilde

Boys are not stones I think you know that! Boys bleed too. Boys cry also. Boys don’t live in the space where worries have no bed to lay. They get hurt also. They feel the same pains as girls do. Why treat them like they have no feelings and emotions ? , what you call your dog is what it bears.
Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.



Ralph Waldo Emerson

To those boys out there lost in thought of yourself, please, don’t allow yourself to be put in an unnecessary pressure and I am not saying we should be lazy either by not doing anything reasonable, but everyone has his own time. Don’t hurry to get married because the society or your parents imposed a certain age on you. Don’t worry about meeting up with some certain decisions and things; things will get better as you strive along.

You made being a BoyChild evil forgetting that we are all important beings to look after. You treated the girls specially and allowed those boys to go look for their own future themselves. Why won’t they bad gangs? Why won’t they stray away from your eyes? Why won’t they haunt and hunt you later? You told them that real men don’t do drugs but you pushed them into the street at a tender age, yes, when you abandoned them to seek the face of the girls the only solace they could find was drugs.

Boys are not stones they are humans just as you were created. They need to be taken care of also.



©John Chizoba Vincent

FOR THOSE BOYS WHO THINK LIKE ME.

I have always told you how brave it is to have you in mind, i have always told you that nothing should stop you from being who you are. You have the most powerful brain in you and there is no how you can not create a better future for yourself. Think and grow rich everyday. Never you underrate anyone. Never you look down on anyone. Serve the masses of pride in the dungeon of hopelessness. You are dreams and Hope in the eyes of the world. When the time comes for you to manifest nothing will stop you from shooting down fear. I have always loved you, I have always loved teaching you the creed and prayers of comfort and communication, I have always loved to hold you in my thoughts and allow you to sit closer to what seems like a dream and aspirations gallantly standing in my mind.

Boys do not what the society told you before you started writing your names on a piece of papers. Boys do not bank your beliefs in what the society said about you. If we have to visit and sing together in the room where goodness reign, let it be possible through the laughter once created by the atmosphere of miracle not molestation. I have known you even before the slum picked you in dire rejection. Think like me and hope like me, rip of yourself into memories of love. I will always hold this against you when tomorrow comes and I have no prints of your deeds.

home, leave home as you journey loosely into the world of pain but don't forget to visit home. My empress prince have you in mind. I have called Jaja yesterday, I wrote to him and told him about and why Chimamanda created him. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie made him voiceless from the beginning. She made him seems like a forgotten boy. I still have him in mind. I wrote about him in pains of how feminists can treat boys like us. I told him not to worry about the pains he went through. I knew she manipulated him into a ticker bull. I know she ruled his ion through the voice of Kambilinudo. He was created in absurdity, think about him boys. But boys, let your mind be at peace, we have over come.

To Ikemefuna, I wrote to him with a trembling muse. I allowed myself into his soul to reach out to those lyrical moment where he sang of lost. If a man's mouth is small, must he borrow a bigger one to talk to his children? No. If a man's penis is too small must he borrow a bigger one to birth truthful and certified boys? No. I have you in mind boys. I truly do. For you who wear my skin and never get burnt by the fury and anger in it. For those of you who think like me, for those of you who are of my kind and caring and loving, for those of you whose shadows were dedications to the spirit of Nri brotherhood; for Nkporo boys, I won't forget you in a hurry.

Do not cry over anything. Do not point accusation fingers over the weed of your neighbours. Do not rebel against your brother or your sister. Do not home as foliage of silence. Do not home as armies of proud torment. Do not home as a pyramid of awakening unbroken madness. Do not home as soon as you think of me. Leave home, get rejected for once, get abused, get molested, get hungry and never think of going back home as this is going to happen. to that home is an endless atmospheric nightmare but do not think of it. A handful of thoughts interwoven with plans will do you good everyday. I am not ashamed to be called a boy. I am not ashamed to look into the eyes of the world and I tell her that I am not ashamed. I am liking the man I am becoming. I can look the sun in the eyes and mirror my echoing self into instances of esteem.

I have told you do not come home to a land where the god is apeased with a strange daily toll of skulls rolling from east to west and from North to South. Do not all these things when the pleasures of your harvest return home because home is where we first started talking about me and you before we left to a foreign land.

©John Chizoba Vincent
# The_Boy_Hero.

arinze3131:
when d time z ripe, we shall have that which we seek. I encourage all biafrans 2 keep pushing forward cus we are almost there. God bless the land of the rising ☀

God bless you so much

This statement fell from his mouth as his mother lynched him with a whip on the ground. He shouted at the top of his voice defending his manity, voice shaken and hands akimbo. There on the street I stood watching him enduring and fighting to be freed from the grip of his mother. I watched him trembling like a chick beaten by rain as I thought of a way to rescue him, but in my country you don’t buy wares you can’t sell at the end of the day.




How do we then hold our breath and pocket our tears seeing this? Is this not reason enough to feign death in the arms of the air when you are seen as a burden by the same woman that gives birth to you? Do tears and agony reflect the essence of living? Are we always meant to substitute laughter for tears and joy for sadness as boys? A giving day, a week of deadly pain, a giving sun, the harshness of the rocky pain. How do we define torture in the hands of those who are meant to safeguard us?



When a five year old boy is told that he is old enough to take care of himself, when a ten year old boy is told how to build his own family, when a seven year old boy is told how to take care of his sister, how to defend her, how to make her not to think more of their parents‘ absence; then desperation will set in and confusion will table notes of submission in his eyes.



I have heard a woman say to her neighbour “Wow, boys! You must be really busy! I bet that is a lot of work – having all boys!” Are boys really a burden to raise? Life itself is a lot of work. Parenting itself is a lot of work. Raising girls is also a lot of work. What in this world really does not have a lot of work in it? We are just boys; we are not a burden to whosoever is raising us. We might seem stubborn in nature, we might seem to be strong agitating or protesting in what we think and believe is right to do but are definitely not a burden to the world. Mind you, some people are just talking and not thinking.



Why would you call God’s gift a burden? It gets a little tiring hearing our mothers say this on a regular basis. In reality, we are a blessing to our immediate environment, to our family and society at large. It is not because we never get dirty, it is not because we are better than our counterparts, it is not because we don’t create problems or headaches for our parents but it’s normal to children in nature.



Although some parents see boys as a burden when they yell and get worked up when boys act like boys, this challenge can help you also as parents as an opportunity to practice how to respond in a godly way. How to overlook some things and be normal for once. Some parents get frightened at the thought of having boys, they are afraid as to how they will raise them, some also on how they will raise them to become godly. But in all, is there really such a difference between raising boys and raising girls? And why do parents or society at large act as if girls come from Venus and boys come from Mars? Why do we have such a mindset in our society?



It is relatively undesirable for a parent to keep complaining that a certain gender of child gives him or her problems more than the other. Why is no one writing an article or book bemoaning how ugly it is to be a mother or father of three girls? Why is the accusatory finger pointing in the direction of boys?



Just like that boy I saw on the ground beaten black and red while his sister sat smiling as he was beaten, they committed the same offense. Yes, they crossed the main road together. He was being beaten because he was a boy and was supposed to guide his sister or rather hold his sister’s hand sheepishly before they cross. Obviously, that was the reason he was beaten and his sister pardoned because she hadn’t gotten to the age of crossing the road herself or probably in the same way society claims that boys are stronger than girls.



Is there really a big gender gap between these children? Steve Biddulph, an Australia child psychologist made a lot of money convincing us that the two sexes are divergent and that we need to buy entirely different books to help raise them properly.



Ultimately, stereotypes exist in raising children because they reflect the realities we see in daily life. Indeed there really is a stigma in our society, the stigma of girls over boys.







©John Chizoba Vincent

A misogynist is one who displays prejudice against or looks down upon women, or better still is one who professes misogyny; a hater of women. These are the layman definitions of a misogynist.



Wikipedia defined misogyny as the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. Misogyny is manifest in numerous ways, including social exclusion, sex discrimination, hostility, androcentrism, patriarchy, male privilege, belittling of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification. Misogyny can be found within sacred texts of religions, mythologies, and Western philosophies.



I think before you call someone a misogynist you should at least know the meaning of the word and why people use it, how to use it; have a full understanding of the context before you use it on someone. Don’t just wake up one day and label a man or boy a misogynist. I don’t hate women. I repeat again I don’t hate women. If I do, I would have caused my mother the whole pains in the world, but I don’t, I love her with all my life just like I love all women. The fact that I decided to create a boundary between what I called myself and what girls are to my life does not mean I hate them or don’t talk about them. Stop pointing the accusatory finger at me. Mind your thoughts and the process at which they may fall from. I am just a guy with the same blood and flesh as yours. I have taken my time to come to the realisation that we are created to live our lives just like the way it pleases us. You cannot decide another man’s destiny just as you cannot decide your own.



I am a boy once lost in the street of pain, bred in the ghetto streets to learn how to spell genocide. I’ve smelt hardship like the palm of my hands with other boys and that defined my character as a boy. I love boys because they represent me and my struggles to find my feet in the busy world. I am not a misogynist trying to put women aside from the twisted fate of the world. They have their place in my life and anytime I them, I my mother and the agonies she had to through to raise me and my siblings. I have a part for them in my life, a part beautifully carved in golden coral; part made by flowers and snows of love. I don’t hate women nor do I see them as burdens to me but sometimes in life you just have to choose what comes first and what comes next.



Here are thoughts of misogynists which are quite different from what I believe:



When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood – M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight.



Some women do not masturbate for pleasure; they masturbate to make a political statement: to remind us that women do not really need men (or at least not as much and as frequently as every single male chauvinist and every single misogynist believes) – Mokokoma Mokhonoana.



I’d never gone in for academic gender theories, but Bailey’s cross-examination strategy–with Farrar and other women to come–convinced me that the culture of criminal justice has a fundamentally masculine tilt. Repeatedly, in a manner that I suspected was typical in modern courtrooms, he portrayed the female mind as intrinsically unreliable, ruled by emotion, immune to logic, prone to pettiness, swayed by lust, and corrupted by vanity. It rarely spoke plainly. It was seldom candid. It was composed of layers of hidden agendas. It put up a front, behind which was another front. It either aimed to please or to conceal, which were often the same thing. The only way to get the truth from it was to push and prod until it snapped. Make it angry. Make it cry – Walter Kirn, Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade.



Because misogynists are the best of men. All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice: “Please understand me. Misogynists don’t despise women. Misogynists don’t like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women’s femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don’t forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist. No woman has ever been happy with any of you! – Milan Kundera



Sometimes in life, when you follow a particular movement to achieve a designated goal, people would call you many names and others would have no option than to follow suit to call you what they don’t really understand it meaning, that is why I decided to clear the air in of what I have heard or read about me. This is a free world and the sky is big enough for all of us to fly depending on the lane you choose to follow.



We have hungry feminists in Nigeria and we have genuine feminists who stand for something very particular for women. But I have chosen to be different from every other writer we have in Nigeria and the world. To leave something for the boys who are coming after us, for boys of tomorrow and for the BoyChild for them to understand that what society carved or painted about them can be replaced. I have chosen to this part because of what I’ve seen or heard about the boy child or men.



When I wrote “Men are not Beasts” and “Boys Are Not Stones“, I opened the floor for women and men to air their views about the subject matter. I write about the BoyChild because society sees male children as superheroes, that is to say they may likely have no feeling or emotion of their own. They don’t feel pain or heartbreak. Our thoughts are being patterned in this formless manner. We see them as not being broken, we look at them like nothing hurts them but the truth of the matter remains that these special species have their own shortcomings, they have their own dark shadows and dark rooms where life tortures them also. We may not likely see this because society made us unable to. But truth be told, we are all humans with flesh and blood. If you put your finger in a fire and it hurts you, you dare not ask another to do the same because if you do; it makes you inhuman.



Jane Austen, in Persuasion once said this “I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.” “Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”



Because society made women see only men that hate them, not those that love them, society made women see men as beasts and misogynists.



‘Misogynist’ is a word used by women about men who are able to describe women directly and accurately enough to make them feel uncomfortable and insecure about themselves. Leaving one religion for the sake of another is like breaking up with a rapist for the sake of dating a misogynist. Fear happens inside the brain not inside the womb. So believe me when I say that that not all men are streamline misogynists.



© John Chizoba Vincent

MEN ARE NOT BEASTS

Men are not beasts, we still have some loving men out there. We still have some caring men who understands a lady's heart and how to treat a woman. We still have men who can lay down their lives to protect a woman's. Those men who can lay down their lives because they love you. Then, why call all men beasts because one of them disappointed you? Because one of them molested you? Why generalised one man's sin upon others? The fact that one man made you cry does not make all men beasts and wicked just like you have concluded in your mind that all men are the same. If you conclude like that that means all women are the same too because, we have women who are good in assaulting men, who beat their husbands at home, women who are good in molesting and harassing men, Women who fight men like hound dogs; Women who are good in abusing men and rendering them useless for their family and to themselves.

These adorable women sit in the comfort of their homes to rant rubbish of men being beasts, of how men see them as nothing but pieces of trash Cans in the street to be kicked here and there. And if care is not taken, you would discover that these kind of women have never in their life dated any man for complete one month without breaking up with him. They jump from one arm to another smothering their own feelings, seeking for that perfect-made-in-heaven man, trying to know how faithful or the man of every man looks like; never would you satisfy them. These confused women learn to generalise things. They know the best way to sit around to teach innocent girls how to treat men. When you see them gather together, they talk about how to get men bow to their feet. Other things are not important to them but how to treat men like fools because they could not satisfy them on bed or because they could not live up to their standard. Now, must a man die trying satisfy you both sexually and materially?

Let me remind us again if we have forgotten so soon; not all men beat their wives at home. Not all men are two minutes men. Not all men run from post to pillars. Those that does that, I can guarantee you that I don't know the substances that they are made of.

Genesis 1 said that God made man in his own image and after his likeness. So, If you claim that men are beasts that means their maker is also a beast. Those feminists that declared all men beasts, it also means that your father that gave birth to you is also a beast. All men are the same including your father, no exception; It is the fact. We can not afford to sit back on the chair and allow them say this and that and down this negative thoughts from one generation to another and our girls now see their fathers as lions that can pounce on their mothers at any time. They believe that their fathers are those beasts that was released from the forest to devour them. They no longer have respect for their fathers. They no longer see us as men who suppose to shepherd them like little lamb. They ignore advice from men because the stories told to them said that all men are rapist. Because a wrong message was ed to them of men who molest girls in the darkness and other men become devil to them. Because they were told by someone out there that all men are the same. All men can play with their emotions, all men can molest them, all men can harass them sexually; all men can abuse them. These are lies from the pit of hell. All men are not the same.

Sometimes, we don't need to prove to the world our worth. Sometimes, when a tale is told in the land of ladies about men, they should learn the art of research. The art of asking and not incubating that which was said into memory. Sometimes lies can be birthed out of envy and jealous towards the opposite sex.

Sometimes, you need to ask your mother why a particular situation in your family remain the way it is now. You have to ask your mother why she said your father is a monster and look deeply into her eyes for an answer? Ask her why always fight your father at the slightest mistake? Ask her some questions about your family as a girl and watch her tell you something that would help build your own house. I think we should not believe whatsoever that proceed out of any one's mouth without making a deliberate research on it.

In fact, there must be a reason why a man would raise his hand on his woman. I am not saying this to justify the actions of some men who beat their wives. We see faminists all around the corner agitating for equality but have you ask yourself this questions: what is the purpose of me becoming a feminist? What course am I fighting for? Am I a feminist because my friends are? We need to be truth to ourselves. We need to know where we belong to not running from pillar to post like footballers. Treat a right man right and he will treat you like the right lady of his dream. Not all men are beasts that devour women!


©John Chizoba Vincent
Boys_Are_Not_Stones

I HAVE GIVEN NOTHING TO THE WORLD YET

I ran out of my self yesterday trying to be myself. My shadow watched me as I ran, it never followed me. It stood aloof looking at how desperate I was to myself. I tried to ran out of my body to the measurable deep down of the earth but I failed. I failed myself again trying to be me. Trying to restore me like the one I used to be before. Trying to take charge over everything that comes into me but I failed myself again just like I always fail myself. I told me that I have to try again to be me but the beauties of being me is the ashes of Eden prairie trapped on the road of nothingness.

I am empty yet full of hope to come, I'd emptied myself into abyss and oblivion of darkness yet, I am full again to those people that stood by the covenant of who I was made to be. I have given nothing to the world yet, I have no plane I have made, I have no human I can point at and tell someone I have helped him or her to the top, I have no idea which have served or saved humanity then, why should I ever think of running away from me to the belly of the world where no eyes will see me again. Through the eyes of the needle, the last teardrop from my Verizon of thought interwoven into crumbles of lost courses.

I could pretend to be trapped in another world while finding myself, a world, though, where I would be asking to let me find out if truly I am born to change some social norms upon discovering again that I was dancing alone in this classical music .

Don't look at me and call me great because I have given nothing to the world yet, I am proud of who I am becoming daily faulting and questioning everything that have potential existence. When we cross path tomorrow, don't tell me how great I am but tell me how my words how impacted so much in you I think that will make me fulfilled.

To run away from the reality of things, from the fact that I was born a boy trying to find my feet on places where men fall into riches, to a place where I can talk to my heart and it's listen without having the mind of its own and I conceived people hated me for being me, for always trying to play safe all the time; for keeping quiet all the time because they said silence is not golden. So I began to write to ease myself of these pains. I the first thing I ever gave out to the street, I ed the very first thing I wrote was my name as a great man not very vividly though, but I know I still the colour I painted the name with. Gold, silver, white and pink. I have given nothing to the world yet, I have never made someone to break down in tears of joy for my kindness. I have never made someone to smile because they all love me for one thing, they all want me for one thing and when those things are gone, they went with them. I crave daily to drop memories that will last centuries to come.

I have given nothing to the world yet. I will still have to make friends that will stay forever and those that would go when those things they love about me are gone. I will still have to create what will make people forget their worries and love themselves. I will write to break and behold histories on my palms. I will still have to shake many tables and uproot many roots that are hidden under ground. I have given nothing to the world yet, the world awaits me, yes, the world will stand still when I stop running away from myself.

I wrote about boys like me yesterday, those boys like me who were given birth by feminists. I wasn't happy writing about them but I was happy I wrote something down. I also created boys without hope, those dregs of the society in the cozy cold outside the street of Lagos, I called them runners of evil because they created themselves in my head. I was happy I wrote about them but I made sure I stole their thoughts into the deepest dream of the secret of the world. I wrote them an epistles.I felt good writing this. I soaked the who of myself in it, sometimes wading so wild and deep I thought it was somehow possible with me when I talk about boy's and their predicaments.

2012 broke me, 2013 arranged me, 2014 introduced another me, 2015 reeked me into afterlife of restlessness trying to find home through the door of agony, 2016 held me ransom for breaking up with the target of love; 2017 opened my eyes to those things I have failed to realise about life. And 2018, life has been blotted out from the blossoms of Spiritism, life of a loner. I'd asked my people about me and many definition of me from people scare the day light out of me. I pray I stop running from my body for something that I would soon outgrow.

2018, I just learnt that, surviving on earth meant wearing yourself and your identity with pride and high esteem, I stopped trying to escape from the person who is to give to the world what he has as he drums it to the ears of the universe. I learnt to embrace myself just like the way I am because embracing myself would give me the opportunity to offer the world my very best.
Hiding from the reality of things won't bring out the best in me rather it will steal so many things from me and give me force hope. I can only love myself and not pity myself. The acceptance from people will first be seen in me before they can accept me the way I am.

I have given nothing to the world yet, so I will stop running to embrace who I am and break free from fear of what tomorrow may bring to the table.

©John Chizoba Vincent
#The_Boy_Hero

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Sometimes the pains of one’s origin become unbearable when the urge to ask what killed your grandfather and grandmother keeps revisiting you over and over without seeking your permission. Sometimes when you keep seeing the amputated leg of your father dangling as he walks here and there and the tattered broken home of your grandparents, you would have no option than to crave for an insanity that can take away your life. This is us seeing through our miseries and survival as a nation. Holding unto these agonies that keep visiting us in the darkness. Holding rivers together with the call for freedom, holding tears on the palms that carry our dead corpses. Biafuru what happened to our homes, our maidens, our history, our sisters and brothers and; our honesty, come and see through the half of a yellow sun.

Biafra wasn’t the sin, no. And we’ll not fear to ask what killed our parents, our brothers and sisters, our relatives.. Biafra wasn’t the curse, no, it wasn’t. The history of the world is indeed a chronicle of oppression.

Ojukwu in his speech said “I still believe that one thing that will bring peace, absolute peace, to the country, the type of peace we want attached to development, is to liberate Ndi Igbo and there is no better act of liberation than accepting that they have equal right in Nigeria.” “We are humans. We live. We fight, fight because the decision to be free is a decision taken freely and collectively, because to become involve in violent struggle for freedom is the only honor left to an oppressed people threatened with genocide, because in the final analysis the only true bulwark against death is to live”

Seeing through the eyes of Amarachi Atama’s elegy and threnody, one understands better what it takes to survive in a situation like ours in the late 60s. The story opened up with chaos and havoc upon the Igbo nation, men and women running for their lives; children carrying luggage on their heads finding home, a home that never existed. Then, the witnesses told their own story about their struggles to survive and to protect their own family, the occurrences of the Nigerian civil war which claimed many souls and left many homeless. It broke many ions with a hand so horrified that sometimes, one deem to forget it but it keeps coming back to hurt and haunt us in our lives with the fact that same thing which we suffered yesterday are still the same which defined who we are in a land that supposed to shelter us. This is our own tragedy, our own pains, sorrow and history that define who we are.

“Biafra is a child circumstance. His existence and survival are always a marvel, sometimes bordering on a miracle. His life is a tribute to man, his courage is his endurance, his ingenuity is his humanity” (Ojukwu)
The agonies housed in our hearts and the threnody which we would keep singing of how we were left naked, our children left in the beautiful hands of hunger because, we were fighting what really belongs to us. We were fighting a course that would forever be in our heart until it is achieved. Like the title “BIAFURU’ ‘come and see’ the story was told with a bitter lips, the visual wonderfully carved and the sound rhythmically striking. The future remains blank looking at the frustration and dire sorrow underlying in the bitterness of our past, in the skin that once housed our forefather with the hope that this land would cease to bark at our feet. This is a brave tale told from the gullible history of the Igbo nation under the fore mind of brothers knitted in the hands of woeful images to show us who were yesterday patterning our feet in reckoning voices. Biafuru remains a gory story under toning the dirge and the venture of our imagination seen in the enhancement of our mind towards those things we fight gallantly to obtain.

At such every dire mystery of elegy is rendered on the peak of those people we lost during the genocide. During those times we were unable to gather ourselves together to call ourselves one because we were lost and clueless.

“What I have become, in this struggle is the mouthpiece of my people. I go where they push and more. We are people we choose to hunger a little to remain alive instead of feeding fat to become respected corpses.” (Ojukwu)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote in her book Half of a yellow Sun “aha ajoka” which literally mean war is dangerous. Tracing back to those stories that my father told us about how they ate cockroaches, grasshoppers, rats and some grasses in order to survive the war. In order to stay alive, in order to protect their families because protecting their families was the ultimate goal. Sorrow was carved, funeral song scattered all over the ground, bushes became their house and revival was the only solution to the burning of this deadly evil upon the land. Life became a song willed to the yonder of the souls to death of the masses. They knitted sparkled eyes under the sun, children were sent, given a gun and machete to fight for what wasn’t their cause. Many were killed, houses burnt, money lost and hunger was at its peak breaking the intestines of those fighting to protect their fatherland.

The director knows what was at stake, he interpreted the story well with His creative prowess and a wonderful picture and he cuddled us into seeing what those that witnessed the war saw. He wore the words on his skin dialoguing the pains where it started and kept us in mind to break panicking that had already built tears in us.

Amarachi bravery rested on the fact that she stood on her ground to document these horrible experiences through the mouths of those men and women who were witnesses to the war. This kind of brevity entails courageous mind to embark on the journey. We saw the story in her eyes, a yet to be forgotten black melancholy that has taken over the heart of the Igbo nation. The hunt is still on. The hunt for Biafra. The hunt for a home and freedom other than a corrupt forest having horrible hearts towards their own. She is a kin daughter of flora Nwapa, a dazzling figurative representative of Buchi Emecheta whose spirit still bears the past on the body of history.

Let these owls keep crying to their nightmares, lets these dog keep barking to the revival of these dreams until victory is attained. The Igbos have a saying that:
‘Oji ihe nwata we lie aka ya elu, aka rawaya ahu owetuo ya ‘. We definitely have a voice, a compiling voice of freedom which will soon be heard someday. And on that day what we crave for won’t be denied from us.

There is hope looking at Amarachi Atama on that Enugu Mountain pronouncing how great the land of Biafra is. There is hope, hope birth in the morning of a new dawn. Our eyes shall behold fortunes and testimonies of optimism and fortitude when tomorrow comes and our voices are heard.

© John Chizoba Vincent

It seems to be the fashion nowadays for a girl to behave as much like a man as possible. Well, I won’t! I’ll make the best of being a girl and be as nice a specimen as I can: sweet and modest, dear, dainty thing with clothes smelling all sweet and violety, a soft voice, and pretty, womanly ways. Since I’m a girl, I prefer to be a real one!” George de Home Vaizey
When you look around, you will understand that we now have more hungry women who called themselves feminists. They parade themselves on the social media as feminists, running their mouth up and down in the name of protecting women rights or rather fighting for what they think it is the right course for the female. Shouting all over the places to tell people that you are a feminist is being insane. Nobody send you, yes, no one cares if you are a feminist or not. You are living your life and please, make room for others to live their life also. Some of you are hungry and needs to know where you belong; some men don’t really have time for your barks. Typical Nigerian feminists see men as competitors; they are desperate, frustrated, and confused of what they stand for.
So handling them, you should know their tactics, don’t argue with them. Just leave them to their stupidity, yes, don’t fight over spill oil. You can’t win them in an argument that will not generate any thing to you. many of them don’t know what feminism is, they don’t really under the term ‘Feminist”, they pick the word because Chimamanda is a feminist. The word feminist have become a dirty word because lots of people that don’t know the meaning of it use it. They all talk about equality, gender equality but fail to realize that nature made this so. Some of these hungry ones thought that feminism is all about fighting men on social media, reminding them how they will never bow down to them. I once met one who told me that once she can find any man that could impregnate her and she have a child, she wont have anything to do with men anymore. She said she preferred being a single mother than to live under one man’s roof who will be commanding her like his maid. The best answer I could give to her then was for her to go and look for a fellow feminist who could get her pregnant and later, she can let go of her.
Some Nigerian women misunderstood the word ‘feminism’ and the best way to deal with them is to keep calm whenever they attack you. Let them be, don’t fight them and never you try to explain or educate them how or what feminism is. Don’t try to drum into their conscience about feminism, if you do; they will end up seeing you as a fool.
Women’s marches are clever progressive divide and conquer strategy that not only turns women against men, but also turns women against each other in the guise of peace and solidarity. it is a brilliant tactic t9o employ media propaganda to make privileged women feel oppressed and then program them to think that vulgarity, exhibitionism and emasculation is empowering” Dawn Perlmutter.

I have never seen a woman who called herself a feminist paying a pride price for her husband! I have never seen anyone of them who could impregnate herself without seeking for a man. Freedom and equality is what all of them clamour but nature does not make us equal. In many ways men will always stand taller. I am not speaking for men or speaking against women but let us clarify this fact that feminism is not all about fighting men and seeing them as competitor in the human market. This is fact. We are training our little girls in a wrong way, little girls now see boys as lions or prey that they must fight, and they see guys as beasts they must conquer. They now refer to men as an asshole. You can’t demand your rights and other things from men as if they are tied with men. No one is stopping you from being the woman you dream of, no one is stopping you from achieving your goals and aspirations. some of these women you watch fighting here and there are confused hungry Nigerian feminists, and the sky is big enough for all birds to fly. I have told my self that I will never exchange words with any of them whether physical or on line. The highest I can do is to excuse myself from them, just walk away. None of these feminists would drag you backward if you decide to walk away from their abusive words. Emancipation of women has made them lose their mystery.
You can’t run away from your shadow, if there is trust, water won’t cook fish..“Trigger warnings are the most ridiculous, patronizing and infantilizing creations ever come out of feminism. But feminists adore trigger warning because it reinforces the idea that women are ruled by their emotions, are incapable of recovering from trauma and are just generally hysterical nitwits unprepared to confront adulthood and reality” Janet Bloomfield
“Society doesn’t owe us anything. I don’t need someone to pay for my female hygiene products to feel empowered. Can we work? Yes. Can we vote? Yes. Do we have the same rights opportunities as men? Yes. What rights are they {feminist} fighting for? What are they specifically? What don’t they have?” Hannah Bleau
Elmar Hussein once wrote that Anti Feminism is not sexism. It does not defend the various types of physical, sexual and moral violence against women in the family and society. it does not claim to violate the natural rights of women, which is expressed in the constitution and the legal system as a whole. Instead, anti feminism s the innate biological differences among women and men, and as final result it is directed against gender blindness… a unisex trend that artificially increases due to feminism in modern global civilization. To protect the natural rights of women, you have to be a humanist who has devoted himself or herself to protect all humans.
Don’t argue with some of these hungry Nigerian feminists walk away if possible and allow them to their views the feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy… self imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.

© John Chizoba Vincent
#The_Boy_Hero.

Sometimes, I miss you and the only thing that can comfort me is tears in my secret room because I don't want them to see me as a weak man. I find solace in those elegies I wrote in darkness for you and your descendants. I find spirited hope in those water we watered on the crops behind our backs. Sometimes, it as if the world has broken into verses of dialogue of dirge in poetry. Sometimes, it as if the world has slated those magical moment of agony into my soul to let out a loud scream or a sharp noise to tell them how I feel about you. To be a man is to be a palace and to be a mourner is to find solace dropping flowers on graveyard. And Sometimes, I don't miss you because boys are not meant to miss each other, it is weakness in our heart and the right the society has foisted in us would be tampered. I would always love to cry my eyes out, I would always love to be in solitude drafting those eulogies of peace in the world. The world has nothing to offer but expired sorrow. mind you, sometimes I want to see things from your perspective, to justify the reality of things. But I am always lost, Boys. Boys, you know we can't burn down the bridge because we would still return to it. I have sang many lost note and ed many lyrics in the sky hoping to line them up to look at them whenever I am down with your businesses.

Sometimes I just shrug you off in my archive and console myself with alternatively realistic versions of things I had created for moments like this. In a moment like this we find stars in holiday of breathing into the souls of humans. You know I won't give up holding the rivers you held yesterday. I would always caress your beads and hold onto my tears. If I was stronger, I would have loved you longer than this. You shouldn't have let me fall. I love you, Boys. I love you boys like the love the sky has for the sun. I may not be perfect as father, an uncle or in-law but nature made us who we are. I am not being sagacious with this theme. I was never made to walk through the eyes of pain. Touch my pains and see how my soul burn. I am holding these rivers amidst laughter and tears. I am holding these rivers amidst laughter and agony. Do not ask me why the sun still shine in my soul. Do not be emotional if I erase your thoughts from my lurking heart. Sometimes, I regret burning the first letters we drafted, one of my most lucid memories of you. The photograph of your smiles are boldly carved in my memories but I fight every night to keep it safe. I never being a age r to this course. Life is beautiful, you know. Like the elephant of the jungle whose shadows betray the statue of the illuminious iroko, it's sunny side body holds histories of many generations. We sometimes miss our way into abyss but these scars are the mark to our home. We'll write this tale together when we see in the spirit where Acheba, Okigbo, Elechi and BUCHI Emecheta will welcome us as writers.

Sometimes I hug myself for taking such a bold step to call your names in the darkness. Sometimes, I dream of resurrecting you with praises. Sometimes. I think of those track you left behind which is now covered by grasses. . Sometimes, I wonder how life would have been with you if you were alive with us. You were the stars, Boys. Sometimes, I tell myself it would not have been different you staying here with us in the ghetto to see what Buhari has done to us. He closed all the pages that we wrote our memories. He closed all the channels that bring water into our well. He chorused our footsteps to the coming of the beast of underground. Our ancestral homestead abandoned. There is suffering and pains here. Maybe forgetfulness was created because of you, maybe forgetfulness made those women in labour to laugh out again in between their pains. Maybe, we are here for the testimonies of our land which have been written on the face of the sky. We love the abbreviation of these tenses in the slightness of misfortunes. You know you created stars before hand. Holding wet sun on the surface of the rivers. Holding rivers on the surface of fire. We burn differently, we burn separately pending our histories on the ground where skulls rolling from corner to corner. Sometimes I close my eyes to hear your laughter echo through my ears. Sometimes I wonder how life would have been without you and sometimes, I wonder how it would have been with you. Boys, you are symbols written or carved on the body of the sky.

I listened to another music this morning like always. I saw you in the lyrics. I heard your footsteps in the notes. I watched you leave and return again with tears of loneliness. Sometimes, like tonight, I get emotional over your souls, every little thing about you. How come you have to leave at this moment? Life is like a market everyone coming to buy and some, going home. The truth of the matter is that some of your photos are carved in my mind, no physical one. The pictures of you laughing, the pictures of crying, the pictures of you holding your beads. These moments I want to create physical photos of you right from memory, a photo of you smiling and holding your hands together because when hands cross path, a memory is created. Let this candle keep burning into pieces of aspirations and inspirations. I wait here to locate another of you throwing your head backward to laugh like when we were little younger telling ourselves stories that touches the heart.


©John Chizoba Vincent
For_The_BoyChild.

Lol

Sometimes I always get myself into some thoughts I'll rather avoid on a good day because some issues are better left behind than talking or writing about them. Some other times, I refrain myself from these thoughts, from putting them on a piece of paper for other eyes to have them just as I have them in my mind. I just have to hang memories here and there because if I don't talk or write about these stuffs, I'll become frustrated within hence, the best thing I can do to help myself is to write them out on papers just to be sane.

Sometimes ago, I once shook tables of some hard feminists and the experiences I got from them was really interesting. The arguments, the fear, the abuse and many other things that came around our neck-to- neck chameleon arguments made me to understand more and distinct characteristics of these very species called feminists. I wonder how they will train up their boys if they eventually have one. Would they abadon them in the street for their counterparts, Girls? Or would they give them the same treatment they give to their girls? I keep running away from this but the more I run, the more I come face to face with the reality. The other day, in my neighborhood, one of them told her son to go and meet his daddy and stop bothering her. She told him that he belongs to his father while the girl belongs to her. I wondered why a mother was painting that kind of scaring picture to her son. I wondered why she made that clear enough to him that he belonged to his father and not her. It amazes me how these so called feminists throw some clothes against their boys and expect to have peace of mind in the future. You can't eat your cake and still have it. The world is changing drastically and in the nearest future, women who called themselves feminists will start aborting their pregnancy if they discover it to be a BoyChild.

And this is exactly what will happen if I have someone like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as a mother. We'll never agree to each other's opinions, we'll always step on each other's toes because some of these feminists ideologies suck. They are out of this world. I will make her understand that the fact that some girls or women are sexually abused and assaulted by men, some men out there suffer the same thing from women. The fact that they don't cry out to the world does not make them stones. Men are not truly beast, I will tell her. Definitely, there will be clash of idelogies and thoughts because I won't bring myself down to dance to every of her rhythmic beats. Or whatsoever that proceed out from her lips, I won't! We were humans first before we became people of different genders. we were birthed in different environments and these environments have some fundamental principles and policies which once stood as a guidelines through which our parents trained all of us. And as we grew up to become men, we learnt to make our own royal paths which may seem so perfect to our eyes, sometimes, abandoning those paths created by our own parents. I think from the onset, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and not withstanding, there are some striking opinions that one needs to look into. You wear some people's thoughts in defense of what they concluded to be the real truth about how and what humanity should be or look like. Nature can't be cheated, it can't lie; it made man and woman and gave us insanity and sanity. Life and death, white and black, and choices to make. Nature gave us positions to suits our individuality and personality. Although the society betrayed us all, the society lied to the men. It made us look like super heroes who have no reasons to laugh, cry and express our feelings and emotions and still remain men or boys. Yes, the society lied to us all.

If Chimamanda happens to have a male child, I wonder the kind hand or method in which she would train him. whether she would give him the same opportunity she gives to her daughter, whether she will beat the drum closer to him or farther away from him. Whether those suggestions she made to Ijeawele would be applicable to the BoyChild. Maybe she would like to take total control of his emotions and feelings, maybe she would have him look desperate and sturborn just like her son, Jaja. Maybe she would abandon him for the honour of the GIRLCHILD. A boy like me won't allow her to drink water and keep the cup where it suppose to be. We will have to argue about many things. Our philosophies and principals about these two genders won't work for each other. We'll have to break and re-arrange things and break again many times before we may likely come in term with each other on a longer head. Two strange beings can't be living in the same room without having to loose themselves and gets mad at each other. We will have to disagree on many things ranging from the fact that boys are to be given attention and privileges also as girls are being given by the society. Boys have emotions and feelings; they are not stones. Patriachy is of nature, it is natural.

I'll like to run into her thoughts as often as I can. Ever since I was a child I have this dream of protecting the boys from so many harms that the society has foisted on them. I don't think of male children just like everyone out there does, It's not the normal way you think of them, following your instinct as quickly as possible with your right mind. It's something you can't really understand about me. Something so perculiar with me.

When I run through my head over and over again, I zoomed drastically into the deepest secrets of boys whose mother are feminists, edging closer to something potentially more dangerous to whatever I'm thinking about. How do they keep Standing aloof from their mother? How do they try to balance their feelings and emotions together without that of their parent who happens to be a circled feminist? I try to understand why I'm always on the way thinking of these things , and the more time I spend trying to understand this, the more difficult and absurd the whole thing becomes to me.

The things I talk about faminists like her aren't abstract and by logical consequences and understanding of what the contextuals are. But by context, when you choose to be a little bit figurative with these logical consequences or with what they stand for in their real self or by implication, I'm sure you'd see them in a deeper picture of who they are and what they actually fight against. Have this unsatisfying truth that we can't change what is already designed by God, though — I can sit on the steps calmly and watch the world around the boys fainting into tears and sorrow, as you see me down through my words, looking steadily into the eye of the future, and would still be on the defending part of what I believe in. I can be writing about boys caught in the web of lies while she writes about the girls left unattended, smiling at an imaginary shy character she created just like Kambili and I'll still be thinking about the boys birthed by feminists. I can be in front of people, talking about my life as a boy, teaching boys how to breath through themselves and not trying to harm girls, trying to stretch lips by evoking spittle-thread between boys and girls, yet I'll still remain me.

I will ask her why a feminist like her created kainene (a woman like her) and allowed her to get lost in the forest without looking for her, why she would allow her creation to go into oblivion and still tell the world that she doesn't know where she has gone to. I will ask her why Jaja has to through those pains just to protect her mother prestige and image, why? Hopefully, I'd loved to defend Jaja just like she defended Kambili, perhaps that may be the difference between being me and her. Or better still, defend the two, maybe that is a better way to serve humanity than defending one side of it.

I started running into these thoughts right from the day my feet stepped into University of Nigeria, Nsuka, and I scanned through her descriptions of the deepest part of her inner memories and I realised as much as my memory can figure out her thoughts then, she has no space for the BoyChild. when I first discovered the implication of being a boy in the world full of feminism and aggitations and protest and fight for survival and existence between these genders especially in a class dominated by eyes which only behold the struggles of female and not struggles and assaults of the boys also, I was made to believe I represented everything else those boys out there in the street needs. Voice. Courage. Bravity . Greatness.

So I began to write yesterday, I ran out of myself to the street to sit closer to these boys born by feminists to know how they defend themselves against the flare and glaring state of their feminist mothers. I ran out of myself learning that boys birthed by these feminists learnt to carry themselves by them selves at a tender age. Life is bias somehow but the cruel

©John Chizoba Vincent
#The_Boy_Hero.