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THE BIRTH OF ILLUSION


 – By John Chizoba Vincent
Mother said the best place to laugh is in the graveyard and mortuary.
Father told us the better place to cry is in the church,
but, I’ve learnt that the white place for all these is within you!
because it gives you a grey freedom,
freedom to be a loner,
freedom to walk by yourself yourself;
freedom to drink from your lost black memories,
Search through the tattered grit history that made you.
freedom to weigh your wandering thoughts on your palms and see the reason why the earth is against every human.
Freedom to see your pastor’s visions and never dance stupidly without asking how.
Freedom to break hold from your Imam’s illusion in the mosque and, never lose your senses to him!
Storried The Birth of Illusion
I’ve studied nature and discovered the graveyard is the poorest place,
It is rich in loamy and dust and; dust worth nothing!
When our ancestors danced along the forest of Umuahia,
they lied to us,
they planted falsehood in us like lyrics of music.
They took us to where we could find death,
Handed over death to us to keep amongst us through their words.
They handed our shadows to us,
made us cracked the skulls of ghosts.
They spelt evil backward and said that was the watchword.
There is darkness found in purity!
What is purity to you?
What in your world is pure?
Purity is an illusion
Grace is an illusion
Faith is an abysmally dead illusion
and you’re a faceless illusion!
Birth today, dust tomorrow after merriment.
Fateless dice are thrown back of a chess board…
What will be the name of the street heaven will name you?
what room number will be yours in heaven according to your pastor’s spit?
Do you know if hell will have pretty harlots and tent of alcohol?
Men will be glad to go there than heaven.
The last time I visited the devil, he told me this:
“illusion is birth through the bar of our parents’ mouth,
Faking those galaxies they told us dwells on the palms of a tattered boy”.
I looked through a broken mirror
I saw a better part of me in horror.
With incomplete teeth,
grandpa told us school was the best…
and we queued to receive our doom,
now, our doom took us into captivity.
We are this illusion nature spoke of
that was birth mysteriously.

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