Day 30: Kensinsi

"Kensinsi" (pronounced /ken sin see/) in Ibibio/Efik (a Nigerian dialect)
translates "forever."

By the way, that's not yours truly in the image above. It's Dad and Mom
who my brothers and I fondly call "Sir & Mma." 1st of July marks 20 years
of Sir's passing. I thought I'd start off celebrating his life early this year.

Kensinsi

You are a never-ending story,

You bought my respect thru the dreams you made real.

Kensinsi

I dedicate my life to illustrate the lil things

You set in motion which turned a simple life extraordinary.

Kensinsi

You are my hero, my shero; you taught me to believe

So I can stare failure between the eyes and still find reprieve

And it's always been that way with you

And me as a kid running around without a clue;

You are the reason I always managed to pull thru.

It will take kensinsi to show I appreciate you.

That's why I owe you,

Kensinsi

Ain't nobody gon' take the place reserved for you, kensinsi;

In my heart I raised two thrones and crowned you King and Queen.

It's all about you can't you see?

With me and you it's kensinsi.

I love you kensinsi nsinsi. (Forever and ever)

Akpan

Day 29: Soul Brother

Beware, Soul Brother

Cause we only got each other.

The day ain't over without the shedding of a bit of blood.

What is is not.

So I struggle ceaselessly

While competition unceasingly

Cast my trophies at the feet of controversy.

Do you see why my brother

Reasons enough you shouldn't sweat the bother

Trying so hard to command respect

When no one expects

To see you succeed

But die the death of a scorched seed

In the very bosom of fertility?

Beware, Soul Brother,

Cause we only got each other.

So I illustrate life in a parable.

Living words on breathing marble.

The essence of truth is defected

And trust relationship's relegated.

If the future got eyes

I pray it can visualize

The past so that it arrive

With a perfect plan

For the race of man.

The goal of our mission

Was to rewrite the story of destruction.

Why can't we get our act together?

Beware, Soul Brother,

Cause we only got each other.

Akpan

Day 28: If

If I die

The next moment in this timeline

Could anyone judge aright

If I failed?

If I closed my eyes

And crossed this realm a 1,000 miles

Across the threshold of paradise

Would I find a special place?

Set apart

For a hero of the heart?,

Brimming over with state of the art

Peculiar mistakes?

If, by chance, believing

In one's dream's could be traded for true living

Since I had no guide to point me

To the right way.

Akpan

Day 27: Blind Obstinacy

Give me eternity

On a platter of mortality

And let me fantasize on reality

Thru a vision of infinity.

I stand as one,

Among a nation of millions;

One voice Thundering above a deluge of noise.

I am the messiah

Of my salvation, my kingdom's sire

Seduced by a blind obstinacy,

I go swinging on a ledge of audacity.

Akpan

Day 26: I Shall Not Be Moved

I stand on the pinions of a solitary fantasy

Daring threat from an incendiary bomb.

The air reeks of cloying hypocrisy

Intimidating the soul of my song.

Scavengers showing the tongue

Waiting for me to drop dead.

Situation breathing down my neck

My hope, the anchor for my goals,

And I'm not even close,

Shreds apart cord by cord

In the moment of discord.

Now I walk thru a valley

Where death is a living shadow.

Have you ever witnessed a dark rainbow?

But however my mission is misunderstood,

I shall not be moved.

Akpan

Day 25: Trumpet of Prophecy

The glory of ashes

Is substantiated in ethnic clashes.

Quicker than a rose,

Poisoned minds perish from deceit overdose.

Ambiguity is relished

Certified ignorance shadily brandished.

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus train

Construct railway tracks in my heart.

The worst anarchy is loosed upon my brain

Like a simulation of the pains of childbirth.

But my recitals are for poignancy;

The trumpet of prophecy.

Akpan

Day 24: Unholy Communion

Rules get deleted

Unholy communion initiated.

But let my due feet never fail

And conscience a coat of mail

To shield me from feeling diseases

When the influence of virtue decreases.

The arms of pain are outstretched

A whirling vortex of affliction to repress.

The stench of decay

Erodes the reason to dismay.

Childhood imaginations

Suffer escalated contortions

And the consequences of lies

Slides a log over your eyes.

Akpan

Day 23: Fickle Pensioners

My soul spins a spiteful oracle

Of a giant who sleeps

In the season of his miracle.

Of delight bottle-necked in

The confines of a fairy tale;

Of prophecy

Stillborn before it broke surface;

Of a heavy weight of hours,

Of due process and tons of bluffers

Which having been must ever be.

Of oil, of gas, of natural bliss

Which spitefully rob us of a national glory;

Of a beginning held victim

By the very end it predicts.

Of promises melting in the heat like clouds of rain;

Of fickle pensioners of Morpheus train.

Akpan

Day 22: Blinding Testament

Totally out of place

In this man-invented Hades,

A soulja's focus

Crosses the line to the radically bogus.

How do I escape my spot in vanity

From hypocrites preaching continuity?

I feel I'm out of my element

And the perils by my side is blinding testament.

Akpan

Day 21: Heavensent

The afflictions

That range and pose

Threat to a persecuted mind,

In its vanity promises repose.

But I won't let it ruffle my mind

Cause my soul will retaliate in kind.

I will lay pursuit of the seed

Of my dream until I bind.

Even if valiance ceases

I will wait patiently for my season.

For I refuse to compromise an heavensent

Breath of inspiration with a tainted consent.

Akpan

Day 20: Hell’s Own Respite

Wilder than a storm,

As gruesome as a cross,

Stealing the moment of pause,

The stench of habeas corpus.

Inhale the death,

Marching thru the anarchic gullet.

A mixture, a potion,

A disease, beads of destruction,

Arriving on the ills of the night;

Hell's own respite.

Akpan

Day 19: Pasted to Eternity

Details of me are pasted to eternity

I am a stranger to fear,

A well-blended anomaly.

My beginning is further than here;

I am the pitch of night.

What I will be trumps despair.

In the quest to discover

The depths of a gifted individual,

When it seems impossible to uncover

His deep but hidden essences.

It makes a whole lot of sense

To construct peculiar verses

To have a ledge with which to reach,

To thrust, to mount up, to bridge

Until the unattainable is breached.

Akpan

Day 18: Dunbar

Here's to a story

That was never completely told

Until mine was told;

Here's to legend that could have been forgotten

But for the fact that I was begotten;

Here's to bread loaf

That was nothing but stone

Until it set a tone;

Here's to a life yet unfulfilled,

But when it conceived my being;

Here's to you

For everything you ever meant to this youth.

Akpan

Day 17: The Wind

I feel the gush of the wind

Beneath, lifting me off my feet

And my water runs deep.

Mystery rapes my reason

And my unconsciousness got fertilized

Birthing a stampede of unspoken seductions.

It shades and dapples my mind

With a wide spectrum of exotic imagination.

Then I walk in a door

Ineradicable, to witness ineptitude roar

My status is displaced

On a diagram of men

And so are my ways.

But no one will take this from me

Even if their minds were warped and drilled

Like the depths of a valley.

Not if their arrogance

Is the peak of a mountain.

The panther within pounces on zephyr

And underneath are the wings of desire.

Akpan

200

For the 200+ kidnapped Chibok girls.
And it's my birthday, today!

I ain't in a grave. I don't die.

And I know that what I know about myself eats you up inside.

It's simple logic yet, you can't visualize why I multiply

Beyond the grave. My balls is thicker than my waistline

And the last article of me you erase is this light of mine.

I ain't in the grave. I don't die.

Cause I know there's a spot in this universe only I can fill.

Purpose by design feeds my yenning for home.

My faith is so firm the fear of death don't frighten me.

And can't no incendiary bomb penetrate the walls of my hope.

I ain't in that grave. I don't die.

Everyday I rise above the drama you keep bringing;

Every pain I overcome boosts me up to brave the bleeding;

Every sunrise witnessed is good reason to keep breathing;

Every sunset I survive invites me to keep believing.

I ain't in no grave. I don't die.

Tell Mama, the grave cannot hold down your daughter's life,

Tell Papa, I still believe that one day, ama touch the sky,

Tell Nigeria, this lil’ light still got one more shine,

Tell the world, it's my metamorphosis, ama bust out a sweet butterfly.

But above all, tell everybody: Don't give up the fight;

I multiply beyond the grave. I don't die.

Akpan

Day 16: Simply to Stand

It's my birthday!

Turn the page

Construct a channel for rage,

It's the season to multiply.

Toss out the resolution,

Because you have arrived.

Ride on the breath of inspiration

As it forges creativity,

Bringing it from the rear

To the hub of continuity.

As the fortunes of fear

Fray at the edges

And its association with the mind ebbs.

Close the book!

Come, course up like a vertical brook

The season of the scavenger

Has indeed come and passed

Much like an eclipse of the lunar.

And its moment of pause will last.

And history beckons still.

Stand vertical like an obelisk;

Like a monumental genome penetrating

Simply to stand against all risk.

Set your heart on the plan.

But above all, just stand.

Akpan

Day 15: In Another Place

I see a place

In my mind's eye.

A geographical vase

That mortal weakness cannot belie;

A confident state of mind

Multiplied by undeserved human suffering.

A kingdom where childhood creed blossoms,

Whose very seeds are scattered by the wind of reason

And prolificacy’s hands are tied to the wheel of production.

In this place,

Destiny is faithful

And the colors of individual creativity are beautiful.

Akpan

Day 14: Self-Discovery

Potent as history

And the unfolding is legendary.

Definitions may vary

But coordinates ain't contradictory.

Stable as tradition

Delicate like nuclear fission,

Powerful like radioactive material

Revered like a piece of the extra-terrestrial.

Called into like ministry,

Born into like destiny,

Gossiped like news,

Coveted like renewed youth.

Timeless like lost treasure,

Luscious like stolen pleasures,

Veritable as reality,

Original as creativity.

Fresh as frozen fish,

The indubitable is unleashed.

As the morning breaks,

All hail self-discovery's day!

Akpan

Day 13: Tragedies

Perplexed

Broken by a complex;

My anarchy

Is a personal story,

A beginning that dies

In a child's eyes.

A gruesome picture of society;

A much professed segregating.

Ambition creaks under the strain,

Couldn't handle the blame.

Cause after all I been thru,

I awake to see my achievement fall thru.

And here comes the overlord

Declaring it all my fault.

All so blind you can't see

Your vices destroying a young nation's dream.

Akpan

Day 12: Wither

I'll wither

And die if I must

Rather than be a stranger

Who's practically lost.

The inner mystery

Thrusts me like a dart.

And the poignant details will author history

But not until I start.

But I could not begin

On another's dream

Or be the stem of a fickle wish.

Truth is I seek to pursue

A goal that won't confuse

The vitals within

And to assume something useful

Which initiates the buildup to a beautiful

Conquering of destinies too.

Akpan

Day 11: Questions

So many questions

Left unanswered

Chews away at my life source

Like lung cancer.

Vultures of the times

Scavenging on the carcass of an institution,

A promise deceased in its prime

Deceived by the stillness of confusion.

Too many answers

All boycotting the question

Like lethal potion

Sipped into a word of consolation;

The promise of rain

On a field drowned by flood.

An introduction of pain

In the spilling of a bit of blood.

Akpan