Monday, April 30, 2012

Day 30: Within


NaPoWriMo 2012
Yaahoo! I made it. 30 poems in 30 days!



Within the shadow
You stumble on the factory of grief;
The release of tears
Curtailed and brief.
And of hope deferred.
Our flesh pines like the noon dusk;
The breadth of our days is a speck of dust.

Within the shadow
Expectation is sallow.
Sighing and tears,
Doubting and fears
Birth the circle of existence-
A summary of our experience.
Education is tough luck,
The system’s all messed up,
Gridlocked!

Without the shadow
Reality grows talons
It’s the disease called herd instinct.
Well yeah, it stinks.
Humanity is past feeling
And the best days of our lives unfolds

Within the shadow.
The music moans a dirge
I can feel my shattered bones immerge
In a hub where love is unknown.
Hope wanders like a stray, forlorn,
My heart beats in sync with trauma
Too cold to feel warmth’s aura.

Within the shadow
The days are possessed with rust
Still the night times recall the process.
It’s hard to imagine trailing this course
Any chance at all, of access
Out of decay into an illusion of success
Is like passing thro’ the eye of a needle.

Within the shadow
Hate fiddles
Inflicting torment on the soul in rations.
Dead is compassion;
Safe from the cares of rescuing the perishing.
In this climax, truth is lying
Shameless to the face of the oppressed.
The import of the message is over-stretched.

Within the shadow
Staring in-thro’ eternity’s eyes
It’s near-impossible to realize
How fleeting is time.
The race is weary,
Death is tranquility.
Here lies the bones of determination,
Beneath the palaces of a plague.
When the human heart experiences corruption,
Paradise is seldom regained.



Akpan



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Sunday, April 29, 2012

Day 29: In This Position





I

In this position
My story is an exception-
A passionate execution.
My beginning
Was at the inception of misery;
Multiplied opposition-
Human and supernatural
And now lament is ritual.
I am a predestined individual
But it don’t seem that my faith’s got collateral.
Since my beginning
Tragedy has defined the essence
Of my existing
Now I reminisce
In this place of memory’s evanescing.
Cause from my childhood
The good I dreamt
About youth
Remained true fantasies-
Fairy tale excesses.
The streets are the crematorium of destinies,
The cemetery of dreams.
And nobody else has been schooled like me
On this thesis.
I’m letting my pen bleed
As I preach with my soul’s ink
On the lethal repercussion of human greed.
See me in flesh and blood
Rotting in poverty’s spot,
Evil super-imposed before my eyes.
In this gangster’s paradise,
It’s difficult to breathe
Cause the polluting multiplies.
I have witnessed the sun bow down to darkness,
I have struggled with the rage of madness,
I’m living in the eclipse of goodness.
Surviving the time is impossible.
The days are apocalyptic
And decay is inevitable.




II

In this position
My mission has reached a conclusion.
As I battle this pollution
Stash’d in a corner
Like some wasted leftover.
Take a journey thro’ the windows of my eyes
Into the catacomb of a persecuted mind
If you can visualize
What you can’t feel.
I sweat blood to earn a meal
And that was no big deal
Cause my nightmare was kill.
I lived in a mansion
But situation had a passion.
I battled my demons
With terror devised weapons.
Lions, three times my size
With hell’s option for compromise.
But then, I had the end in view
Like a chain-reaction on cue.
The tears betrayed my eyes,
Made it impossible to hide the several sighs.
Money answered all things
Affection became one of those things.
Friendship’s deceit
Hurt deeply like the betrayer’s kiss.
Mates dropped out of school
Like what’s the use?
No one gives one damn about youths;
Not Papa’s tools
That didn’t provide enough food.
And since there ain’t no job opportunity
In the hood
Creativity is one fat bull.
Trauma follows me everywhere,
Hopelessness fogs the atmosphere.
It rains on a sunny day.
And that’s the cost
I have to pay
Since I came to be in this position.



Akpan



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Saturday, April 28, 2012

Against the Ropes




When my back’s against the ropes
And lethal punches rain on me from ten gloves,
Ask me not to be a graceful loser.
The battle has just begun.

When I look blinded for destiny,
Searching, despairingly for something invisible to me,
Ask me not to give up so easily.
All this would be worthless without the adventure.

In the event of my instruction,
When I learn vital lessons through challenges,
I look to see beyond the deception
As I pick from seeming weeds gleanings of corn.

When my back’s against the ropes,
When unnumbered adversaries surround me with stones,
Ask me not at such moments to give up,
The victory is already won.



Akpan



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Friday, April 27, 2012

Lifestyle (II)





How dare you question how I live,
When your assistance was invented to deceive?
You feed your greed
By the breakthroughs I achieve.
I let pain explain
The degree of hate I experienced on this tragic plane,
Cause the dogs are not to blame
For the name of the game.
Yet, the thugs must be crazy.

They call us lazy
Cause we provoke their hypocrisies
And expose them shady.
I do what I gatto do-
What needs to be done to get thro.
There’s hell to pay if I wait on you.
And hell’s really child’s play
When you analyze this tragedy I face.
It’s hand to mouth
And it’s world war IV to zip your snout
While starvation stabs at my throat.
It’s either hustle or I turn ghost.

In this life, you never get what you truly deserve
So I endure a fragile reserve-
A youth with one purpose for a future:
To outlive the laws of nature.
Indeed, you call me criminal
Cause I chose to be a unique individual.
You made a ritual
Of hunting me down
And succeeded in making a little fortune out
Of it while you raped my town
Naked. Truth’s abbreviated
For the prosperity of the party’s hidden manifestos,
All these god wannabe psychos
Refraining pathetic allegrettos.

We are champions of the struggle,
We were here before you,
And after your game fizzles like dew,
We’ll still be here as blinding proof . . .
Marked for death,
It’s very hard not to be afraid.         
You can’t predict what’s next
Damn, all your wit’s engaged.
I’m enslaved
By your freedom
Cause your variety of emancipation
Was designed to incarcerate us.

I invented a personal opus
Within: I’ll bear my cross.
If ever my path hits a deadlock . . .
I’ll brush it off and I’ll walk on.
So don’t question me
If you won’t place your faith in me.
I perceive it’s my destiny
To fashion a lifestyle out of my misery.
You can’t alter my prophecy!



Akpan



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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Lifestyle (I)





Question my lifestyle
Hypocrites got me hypnotized.
When they’re the very things who compromised,
Switching the truth for a set of lies.
Through the years,
We’re still shedding stifled tears.
We had our multiple shares
Of deliberate pain and bold fears.
So we do what needs to be done
Cause till kingdoms fall,
Fools will never learn
Nor could they exactly discern
That the reason we still breathing,
Even though, we still bleeding,
Cause the drama they keep bringing,
Is cause we ain’t quitting.

Heroes ain’t made, but born.
I was born of the fiercest persecution;
Tribulation that would pale the Armageddon.
Was taught it’s my destiny
To endure soul mutiny.
Now the labors of futility
Label my existence vanity.
And why should that bother me?
Or stand in the path of who I be?
I will live as I please
And the vanities will never decrease
But increase to disturb the peace
Of every one of ‘em hypocrites.

I was born into the ghetto
Of the shades of sorrow.
Life’s never been what it seems
So, I’m not gonna pretend that ya’ll w/out sins.
From your least to the greatest
Your very kind of virtue stinks.
I hustle cause life’s a gamble
I struggle to go thro the huddle.
The race I run
No other human can outrun.
Just put the crumbs together
And the imposing sum will make you numb.
And somehow, I find the breath to exhale
And by what’s leftover I attain.
Still all your corrupt talent could see was a thug.
You make the sign of the cross
Yet, squash endangered souls like a bug.

Now the outcast from the last
Shall creep fast and proceed to be first.
If I be lost
My blindness would blind the sun
To hydroplane me through
The darkness of fools.
Best not question my lifestyle,
Cause still I’ll rise.



Akpan


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