Fevers of the Mind

Let Your Kingdom Come

With her voice, she whispered behind. // Let’s make our kingdom come tonight, // And let’s dwell in its home of ecstasy. // For kingdoms are not wild and woolly, // They are a garden well tended to by all, // The kings, subjects, and all care for its peace. // Tonight, let’s have a stroll down the seaside; // And be welcomed by a myriad of flowers, // Ones bearing our choices roses of many colours, // For all these twilight long, I have mended our cruise ship, // The captain and divers are ready to roll our ship, // Into the sparkling waters of devotion unreserved, // Where we will forever inhabit in peace of sanity, //Joy and tranquil, away from our noisy earth, // We will daily build and rebuilding our stories of love, // With the waters of the blue ocean as holy water, //From here we had set out our journey into eternity.

Tongue of an Orphan

This is another poem from where I am breaking my silence, and musing in the tongues of an orphan child of the world, and this is to sing how we have cried as an orphan and never been heard from every thick wall that muffled our voices off the street of mercy and remembrance.

For it is a new poem that tells from where we have learned too quickly to shelter our desires with garments of voiceless wishes in the night, and how we are chased each day, by the breaking of the new day with the realities of the day, and who we are amongst the world today.

In this poem entitled tongue of an orphan, where we have muffled our desires with tears, and clothed our realities with coats of many colours we wore, from this refuge of the land we are born to; as to the sunrise, we arose to embrace life, with life’s cracked-body too rough to be held with bare hands, but with wills, we embrace it with our eyes closed in rivers, as life has vowed to be life in all its forms;

For as an orphan child, we have learned to embrace embers of live coals with our bare hands, and as with thoughts and wills not to be burnt, we have thrown our fears overboard our ship to our dreamland, and are inventing the man next to us in the mirror of life’s grief, and of one who has overcome the tsunamis of life’s winds, and standing at the tip-top of the highest mountains; as we run this race in anticipation for a crown at last, though many are the life’s blows and not like man’s hits of fists against his fellow man, but, we have kept the dreams alive along the way to the crest, and for this is what life as an orphan child has been with us in the tongue of an orphan child.

And as we have been driven and drawn from life’s springs, to water the land from where we are its survival of the fittest, for many are the dreams of our unquenchable desires, in this land of our journey to the promised land of all men, we have become of many troubles with good hopes, in the tongue of an orphan child dwells our tales of victory at last.

(A poem I wrote after William Shakespeare's)
"Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day"

Shall I not liken your beauty as a day in paradise?
You are more lovely and more gentle as a dove:
Though rough winds of life had shaken your wings, 
And the summer's rain-drenched your feathers;
Sometimes you are too cold of our love because of fear, 
And often, you choose to dim the light of our love;
And every dark from the dark side of our love, you declines,
By chance or out of the unknown you feel untrimmed; 
But I assure you, our home is eternal and shall not fade, 
Nor shall there be any dispossession of our dearer; 
Nor should death brag and shades our love to eternity, 
When in eternal lines to life we shall grow:
So long as the River Niger never runs dry or eyes can see,
So long as this love gives our lives a meaning to live.


"The Chinaman meets you with the stolid morality of his Confucianism; the Hindoo with astute logic for his patheism... When I carry my touch into the caves of Africa, I meet only filthy birds of darkness."  Returned Missionary 1873. 

Africa, Seen As A Cave of Darkness

History is biased to my continent, 
and only the few of us would tell; 
how it is in every race stood culture, 
some to the human detrimental; 
and others to their development. 

But why is my Africa is likened to men in caves, 
while her development and culture; 
with men across the sea is seen as evil, 
even that which happens in their lands. 

History is prejudice to the black man, 
it tells of my origin in another's tongue; 
wrecking me my pride and sense of belonging; 
to the human families to which I belongs. 

Histories of the blacks are told with one-sidedness; 
with the mindset of dehumanising his race, 
this is another way history prejudices, 
of the people of our African descent. 

Caves of darkness; where raw materials; 
they sourced from; in their quest to rule, 
a land where their gods has kept their golds; 
maybe for their invasion and conquest. 

Within their mouths, the streets of Bini is never mentioned, 
where the inhabitants of the great city lights; 
up their city entrance to the kingdom with palm-oil, 
because it is not in their language to write; 
of our mind bewildering craftmanship. 

In their quest to write about us the men's of Africa, 
they were so - occupied by negative notions of race,
as my Africa is seen as a cave of darkness and not 
as a continent.

Freedom At Last

We have broken off from the nutshell of pains,
with our sledgehammers of will, and determine.
Against that which encloses our rays of shining.
It was not the sweetest portion of our lives  but, 
It was the necessary path to thread in time.
The ones that ushers us into the purified soul,
where nothing is again hidden within a man.
It is at this threshold that knelt those great, 
to receive their golden crowns, for they've won; - 
the battles of life and its happenings in time.
Those whose names are written in time. 
Those names in a golden pen that arises; 
from afar off they shone their glittering!-
For time heals our wounds of visits to the house, 
those moments of pains and catastrophe; 
They are the only thing that matters to us, 
For it usher us into that needed truths.

Bio:

John Chinaka Onyeche “Rememberajc” (he/his) is an author of three poetry collections “Echoes Across The Atlantic”, a husband, father and poet from Nigeria. He writes from the city of Port Harcourt Rivers State, Nigeria. He is currently a student of History and Diplomatic Studies at Ignatius Ajuru University Of Education Port Harcourt Rivers State.

John Chinaka can be reached through the following means:

Rememberajc.wordpress.com

Facebook.com/jehovahisgood 

Twitter.com/apostlejohnchin

Apostlejohnchinaka@gmail.com

https://linktr.ee/Rememberajc