Wild Child Poem by John Chizoba Vincent

Wild child!
Have your father told you that the day
children decided to go hunting, antelopes
learn to climb trees and snails develop wings
to fly home with yams from the local barns
made for the old men in the heartless clan?


Wild Child!
Have your mother taught you that even if
the crab swim across large and small rivers,
it will ultimately end its journey in an old
woman's soup pot? March not with pride;
pride across the ocean kills faster than death.


Wild Child!
Every mad man is not without some common
sense, he still know how to throw a piece of
roasted Nkporo yam into his mouth and when to dodge a car when at the mercy of his own life.
Wildness is for fools made from the grounded hell.


Wild Child!
Even the civet cat will not sleep if it has to
carry the load which has weighed me down
for so long, to have an only son is to leave
yourself too much at the mercy of the gods.
We have seen the harmattan blew with vengeance.


Wild Child!
Don't ever scatter your thoughts into the bush
like the seeds of an oil bean pod, it's not everybod who has been destined to lick other people's hind
side like me. Remember, one doesn't spend the
early hours of day in sharpening an arrow.

Wild Child!
Don't constitute a painful nuisance like a boil
which chooses to flourish in the public area.
Even if you talk or you do not talk, it would
not make the flood flow uphill. Seat not and
wait for the boiling pot to throw off its lid.


(C) John Chizoba Vincent
Voice Of Vincent 2016