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How Do You Define Genocide? John Chizoba Vincent


HOW DO YOU DEFINE GENOCIDE? 

With your father's skull rolling on the 
ground bitterly as you watched blood 
dripping down from his nose & the 
enemy made you blasphemed against 
his name, how do you define genocide? 
Is it from the Bible or from the Koran? 
Is it from the Jos killing or the Lagos fire? 
Is it from the eyes of an atheist who says there is no God? 
Or from the lies they told us everyday?

How do you spell genocide without having 
tears stream down from your eyes? 
These are the tablets my country made: 
a tablet of blood and cracked sorrows,
a tablet that carries dead bodies to the 
ground without the knowledge of the ground;
a tablet that represents names of darkness, 
like the telescope of an evil crusader, 
Like the elephant wills against the sun, 
Jos wasn't just just to every soul that died to become groaning dust on its land. 
The songs of those who died still strike a forbidden strings in my head.
I dipped my hand in the pocket of my soul, 
a soul came to remind me how he died. 
I dipped another far deeper, a girl frame 
came out, she was sent to get pepper when 
she was killed.
I searched in the room of my heart, 
another smothering soul came out
reminding me of a planned genocide,
a little boy with a strange template was he. 
their pictures still hang in my mind eyes. 
Jos wasn't just just to everyone of them. 

Being a Nigerian is an endless nightmare!
Being a Nigerian is an endless nightmare!

We've been so strong for so long ago... 
We've carried dead bodies & their shadows,
We've defined the colours of suicide dioxide 
and tasted massacre in many ways.
how do we then define genocide if not
through this song we sing, broken? 
If there is God, he has indeed forgotten about Nigerians.

Condolences paid in different ways but a poisoned man keeps hurting our skins.
Being a Nigerian is an endless nightmare!
I won't speak of evil of this land anymore, no,
I won't because of my unborn children, 
Giwa's story is still incomplete.

- John Chizoba Vincent

About Writer:
John Chizoba Vincent is poet, filmmaker, cinematographer, Music Video director and Author of For Boys Of Tomorrow, Hard Times, Good Mama and Letter from Home. He lives in Lagos. 

You can contact him via his social media handles below:
Facebook: John Chizoba Vincent 


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