Friday, December 30, 2016

Only the Rugged Survive

This poem marks my 700th post in 7 years (2009-2016)

Afraid to wake up,
Scared witless of sleep,
Why ya’ll gatto fake up,
When the truths within sleep.
The beginning deepens
The spiteful frustration in the end.
Purposelessness weakens
Hardline juvenile diligence.
In this broad daylight nightmare
I’ve come to recognize as mine,
Life is handout welfare.
Only the rugged survive.

Akpan



Down to Struggle


In the belly of the beast,
The streets consume me like a feast.
Along comes betrayal, hate is yeast
But in no way the least.
To survive with my fist
Is not my wish
So I’m down to struggle hard before I accomplish.
Heat is rain on this rubble,
Food tastes like gravel,
Ghetto healthcare will make you marvel.
I’m a grown man
With great dreams and plans
But I’m yet to understand
Whether my future falls or stands.

Akpan



Bargain Price


Young dreams die for a bargain price,
Out of a job for years in my prime,
Victimized by high-class hard stares,
Underrated by peers.
Born before my time.
Hardly recognized,
Fragments of peace achieved by a fight.
My thoughts are a conflict.
My imaginations are about war.
My very feelings afflict me.
The stress I see
Is greater than men could perceive,
It’s the promise of a seed
That increases the loss I grieve.

Akpan



Phases of Unrest


Visions thro a glass darkly
Explain the repercussion of expecting too much briefly.
The valleys I’ve come thro
Produce irrepressible proof of more to tunnel thro.
Building hopes and dreams
On desolations that overflow the brim
I’m hearing my soul scream
The situation creating insanity,
Throwing my mind on the theory of impossibility.
It’s a world of unfeeling
And my courage is careening
Out of control the only way to address
The last phase of unrest,
Is to stage a protest.

Akpan



Blame it On Blaine

A poem inspired by the hell train in Stephen King's
Dark Tower IV; Blaine the Mono.

A ride on a hell train
Can’t convey such strain.
The aim’s to best Blaine;
But my brain’s so lame,
Faking snakes on a plane,
Headaches turn migraine.
This Blaine train’s a pain,
Riddle me this riddle me straight,
I can’t beat this it aint in my trait.
I’m stuck in a rage of a race.
I’m on center stage of a craze.
The street’s a blur it’s insane,
If I quit the riddles I get slain,
I hear Blain snivel maybe it’s the rain.

Akpan



Saturday, December 24, 2016

Mma Mi

My Mama, the Deaconess Eka Akpan celebrates one more
year on God's Earth today. Happy Birthday Mma.
"Mma mi" (/hmm ma me/) is Ibibio for My Mama.

Love needed no reason,
To set me up with a special person;
Love’s only reason was love itself,
Mma, having you translates as blessed.

I’m gonna write my manger story on you;
A prose on how faithful love beat the odds.
Wise men found a star on the night of the first Yule,
Mma, you are that ancient star in human form.

You were my anchor when I stormed thro a fog,
Your voice was the oil that stilled my troubled sob,
No room in the inns Mma, your heart was my pod:
A tested refuge from the cattle of this cold sod.

Akpan



I Wish You

Courtesy: merrychristmas.quotems.com

I wish you joy that comes with the season,
I wish you goodness that fills your reminisces,
I wish you smiles that light the candles bright,
I wish you strength that comes from the Christ-Child,
I wish you beauty, grace that lasts the year long,
I wish you the vigor of youth your whole life long,
I wish you hope that never dies but multiplies,
I wish you the small things that stir the flame in your eyes.

I wish you a home full of Christmases,
I wish you love that came down from excelsis,
I wish you tools so foolproof you’ll have ecstasies,
I wish you surplus of the bare necessities,
I wish you simplicity first witnessed in a manger,
I wish you the blessings that addeth no sorrow,
I wish you peace that truss the silence of the stars,
I wish you above all, forever hands to hold.

Akpan



Tuesday, December 20, 2016

A Man Like Mandela

Nelson Mandela
Courtesy: gettyimages.com

Mandela,
Like Mandela,
A man like Mandela,
I wanna be a man like Mandela.

I wanna be the face of courage,
I wanna be the essence of positive rage,
I wanna be the radar that keeps focus in range.
I wanna be the prime axis of change;
I wanna be the reason to turn the page,
I wanna be the item that gets your wits engaged.

I wanna be the spotlight of my own Madiba;
I wanna be a man like Mandela.

I wanna be the symbol of what makes a man.
I wanna make solitary confinement something grand;
I wanna be the bond of unity in a divided land,
I wanna take fear and bend it into triumph.
I wanna seize emancipation with no strings attached;
I wanna make my name a synonym for survivor.

I wanna be the shape of hope and its father;
I wanna be a man like Mandela.

Mandela,
Like Mandela,
A man like Mandela,
I wanna be a man like Mandela.

Akpan



Dream I Am


My soul has sight of that immortal sea
My goal has the potential of a seed
If you had eyes it aint impossible to see
Just a fraction of the dream I am
Has got property to revive a dead man.

Akpan



Simple Creed


I emerge
From the turbulence of controversy
To surge
Like the waves of a riotous sea.

Akpan



Nature's Opus


Nature’s own veritable opus
Can’t phantom me a unit of your caucus
I can’t imagine myself slave of a nobler class
Loser, chew the grass
I know who I am
That cannot be revoked by so-called everybody
Trade the genius of me for a scam
Is an idea more unreal than a fantasy,

Akpan



Unconcealed Curiosity


An existence that aint real
Neither abstract nor flicker of a dream
Threatens the life I lead
Unconcealed curiosity
Lures me into the deepest deep
Of Divinity’s secrets for my entity
What I see
Is the bedrock of ingenuity
The eventual futility
Of self-generated crowd mentality
Along the boulevard of misery.

Akpan



Pauper's Bio


I engage myself
In profitable enterprise
I would crave a word from my conscience
Like self-invoked sacrifice
Today is the inception
Of tomorrow’s memoirs
I will re-invent history
With a pauper’s biography.

Akpan



Something Greater Than You


Stand back and watch
Something greater than you’s about to forge
One man’s about to make a difference
And introduce a point of reference
Cause threading the footprint of fools
Is one surefire way to lose.

Akpan



Undivided


A fool and his destiny are soon parted
I’m so undivided
Tho my locus
Makes disregarded individuals raucous
I am one among many
Never to be mistaken for one of many
I am fortified by a personal will
A youth who uses his heart with skill.

Akpan



Dangerous Interpretations


My metabolism evicting hypocrisy
The voices of the majority
Couldn’t blind me to reason
I would not betray reality
For a sip of the betrayer’s wine
Just to dine in your mess like swine
To lose focus
And become bogus
At this time is the interpretation
Of the word dangerous.

Akpan



Hotter Than Ether


Curb your enthusiasm
Your manifestos are fragments of a phantasm
See me stand in the funnel of apocalypse
Like a verse of prophecy
What’s all these bickering
Can’t you see nobody’s listening?
I want to live my life
For something that will last forever
I want to witness my purpose bind
While I stay on the grind hotter than ether.

Akpan



I Will Fear No Pain


Bedraggled and worn to shreds
Standing out here in the rain
The lyrics of my poems
Erase my pain
I will fear no pain
Nor detour from the standard I have set
I open both eyes of my mind simultaneously
To speculate on diseases annihilating ignoramuses
My contemporary suffering itinerary deficiency
Yet my reflexes are engaged by proficiency.

Akpan



I'm Made


With nothing to lose
But a couple hundred fools
And their ill-advised tools
I break free from hypocrisy
I’m losing sight of this sedated fantasy
Humanity
Rotting in a cemetery of split personality
Before my birth
My destiny was preordained
Nobody can squirt
My history cause I’m made.

Akpan



Pleasures of Fools


I can recognize treachery
Especially when displayed in a gallery
To turn my future over to the limbs of deceit
Corroborates a picture perfect defeat
As my days draw to an end
I wanna be proud that I did apprehend
All personal goals for an everlasting payment
Conveyed on the pinions of personal achievement
Because trading my soul for the pleasures of fools
Is exactly what I require to fold and lose.

Akpan



Friday, December 16, 2016

By My Own Rules


From the cradle of hate,
More than minds anticipate,
I blaze
From the womb of the sacred page.
Lyrical like an opus
My eye on the platinum.
Seething
Like the content of a cauldron.
The stubbornness of my will is bleating
The world’s been patiently waiting,
My prophecy steadily manifesting.
The seed I am is sprouting
Thro rock solid concrete.
My dream will breathe
To the maximized degree
Thro a determination that speaks
Greater things than competition tweaks
I am here between two brothers, two traitors
Two thieves; two fools
With panther power surviving by my own rules.

Akpan



Who They Fooling?


Institutions make money out of the youth’s misery
Preaching it’s all necessary
To prove whose heart’s really into schooling.
Guess you wonder who they think they’re fooling.
Breaking all the rules
And cooking up the cock and bulls.
It’s irritating
When you realize the stuff’s really permeating
The society and the stench is polluting
Personal standards and depreciating.

Akpan



Healthy Hearts Bleed


Healthy hearts bleed,
The government retaliates with refined greed,
This stock of corruption is of a rare breed.
Friends flee from feeling in a time of need
Prospects is illin like a diseased seed
We grow up too fast
But the sensation don’t last.

Akpan



Drop of a Pin


To be in this crippled position
Is like braving a volcanic eruption
Tears
Flow via paralyzing fears
What is enough?
Before dust returns to dust
The blood of victims of suicide
Bombers scream out in a heady outcry
Shall an Ethiopian change his skin?
Hear the roar of thunder at the drop of a pin.

Akpan



Evening of Our Lives


Stars dim in a wink,
Stronger hearts sink,
Minds of men scarcely think.
In the evening of our lives,
I cast my bread upon the waters
It’s arrant hypocrisy I find
And every particle of unreality just binds.
Contrary to presupposition
There be many adversaries
Who oppose my stated mission,
Ever-present staunch egotistical emissaries.

Akpan



Mastermind Engaged


Tomorrow’s ashes
Snuff out today’s flashes,
Darkness prevails
Beyond better days.
Sin so thick,
You could hang full grown men by its thread.
Mutual hate is so deep
Ethnic discrepancy richly spread.
Life is a picture perfect crisis.
And the sun of self-delusion persistently rises.
Growth of any kind is discouraged,
And the mastermind is engaged.

Akpan



Godfather Theory


But what bright sparks invented the Godfather
Theory, you wonder!
Mystery interwoven into the fabric of fantasy
Half-boiled truths and lousy dichotomy,
Irate corruption overruns the economy.
Dog eat dog it’s the world we living in.
That’s the reason I rhyme in elegies.
The times infest me with allergies.
Down on bended knees
Tranquility is fleeced.
They believe the prophecy
Yet run with apostasy.

Akpan



The Oracles are Dumb


Here I stand
On the fringes of insanity,
Compensated by near-mortality;
The oracles are dumb.
The feelers of conscience are numb.
Friends dissolved in the fires of persecution,
Fickle like the senate amending the constitution,
Money’s the open sesame into every institution,
And the motive of all academic pursuit,
Yet they deceive the youth.

Akpan



Chronicles of Memory


I falter
At the waking thought of dilemma,
Offered as sacrifice
To the crocodiles of the Nile.
Pain enslaves
My faculty, pressed to the grave
Yesterday breathes again
In the chronicles of my memory.
Like birth pangs on a virgin
Unfamiliar with my kind of reality,
I express an exceedingly split personality
And my ecstasy
Is a reinventing of soulful misery.

Akpan



Correspondent Repercussion


Troubles beseech,
Deserting all on the throes of a stitch,
Resident evil aint that nice a neighbor,
Water verse to kill waterborne horrors.
Virtue slumbers
Like a log of timber,
Correspondent repercussion
Catalyzing a fusion of sedated confusion.
Thro a glass briefly,
I study my surroundings swiftly.
Faith is rewarded with hell’s option,
Prototype drama adoption.

Akpan



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