Saturday, April 30, 2016

Day 30: Amanam

"Amanam" (sounds like /harmattan/) is the
Ibibio word for "Bravo!" "Good job!"


Amanam
And so I give you a hand
Cause you held your own like a man
You stood strong in your faith
And achieved the miracle of moving mountains
You sneered in the face of fate
And accomplished victories and still counting.

Amanam
Even opposition knows you can
You came from so very far away
Piercing dark clouds like a star
And the world can no longer wait.

Amanam and so I give you a hand.

Akpan



Day 29: Living Legacy


Pedestaling a champion
On the ledge of challenges.
Gallant like a stallion
Going thro the realm of Hades;
My misery is a portal
Into the exotic phenomenal.
Who I am
Is the redefinition of Adam;
Temptations
Are pointers to my predestination.

Death of a father
Conceived a seed
That exploded into a million dreams.
This is my story,
The conviction by which I have lived
On this terrestrial surface,
The makings of a destiny
That cannot be erased
Like a living legacy.

Akpan



Day 28: Details


Pictures of gruesome misery
Mark our times
We all ordained under this ministry.
Its captives within our soulish confines.
Terrorism, violence, kidnappings,
And over-indulgent embezzling
At the highest offices
Without details suffices.
Rust-rampage ravages our economy
Like a fully-ripened corn field.
Limp-limbed and hapless
We ya’ll wind-tossed and helpless.

Akpan


Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Day 27: Wheel with the Stars


I long to wheel with the stars
Above earthly seas,
To pitch my tent in esoteric paths
As I constantly roam the heavenlies.
It’s something I feel I gatto do
Eventually it’s something that comes true.
I wanna be the peak of the mountain.
I wanna be the particle of snow on Everest.
To bubble like a life-producing fountain.
And when my days are completed
I long to be the article of posterity
That resolves the climax of a story that never really ends.

Akpan



Day 26: Moves


Let the spirit move you
Until you defy gravity’s law
Yet without a pinion
Reach for the out-of-reach;
For hubris without a flaw.
You have no fear cause you’s a lion

Let the spirit move you
Until the momentum pulls you thro
Relax in the sun.

Let the spirit push you
Into the break of a new dawn.
And when you come thro
Stand forth!
Be a man.

Let inspiration breathe healing thoughts
Multiply like desert sand
Shoot off the top of the roof.

Let the spirit move you.

Akpan



Day 25: When Stars Are Born


In a time when stars are born
The race for reality just begun.
Sons of Adam
Scurrying to meet the demand.
Here I stand
On a pedestal surveying the land
Thro the eyes of my mind,
Like a mental rule.
Guess what I find?
A star is not a moon.
Yes they both glisten
Massive cosmic satellites
Marking and defining earth’s seasons.
I realize I need to be persuaded
From within to define where I’m headed.
If I twinkle
Would I be a diamond in the sky?
Or to put it simple,
Burn like a lamp in the sky.

Akpan


Day 24: Quiet Place


I come to the quiet place
Where I take a seat
Under the greenwood fir tree.
Here I meet release from all struggles
In the homey captivity of peace embrace.

I need no other argument
As I access the simplicity
Of tranquility’s recesses.
I am enough
In the sweet shadow of all I can be.

Akpan



Day 23: Drama's Horns


I live on drama’s horns
Where the zeal of my struggles
Are daily reborn
It’s only natural for me to bleed
I am like  thriving weed
The steadier I run my  course
The more society hates my balls
In the eyes of all who behold my progress
I am a wary process
My tranquility is spiteful commotion
Truth is I find it impossible to belong
As I take a long look at this misery
Which I call my life
I bow down in repulsed reverie
To spit on a rotten plight
If life is a mansion
I live in the servant’s dungeons.
I won’t be surprised when I wake
If I find myself in passion’s grave.

Akpan


 /

Day 22: How I Choose It


After strife,
Comes the extreme excesses of bitterness,
The metamorphosis of trife.
Hasty lopsided eagerness
To undefined idolized individual dignities.
Men seeking the substance in vanities
Trip over blinding signs of reality.
Why chase after fakes
When you can claim the original with a legal ticket?
It’s like fighting over lakes,
Or blindly trading thickets
For greenwood fir trees,
When you can easily pick a forest or sail the seven seas;
Keeping your head up is not an option.
Actually, it’s the only right decision.
So if I’m gonna make it,
I’m gonna make it how I choose it

Akpan



Day 21: Delight of Darkness


Willful men
Groping blindly
Searching for long lost destinies
Cast aside in the height of ignorance.
Depraved men of substance
Listlessly cutting out a path in patches
Edging their days closer
Dangling off decadence’ latches—
Sheepishly tailing accursed strings;
Signing out their annihilation to the nether.
Men sold out to rust
Like corn
On the very verge of ripening
They spin dearly nearer to the edge like lightening
About to peel open the carpet of the sky
Zigzagging their ways in and thro
Darkness’ eternal delight
Men who’ve washed their robes in affectation’s drool
Like timed bombs
Who can’t wait to detonate
Once men of honor,
Now prone to hallucinate,
Slaves to their own error.

Akpan



Day 20: Silver Platter


If I achieve the world on a silver platter
Or lug its mass on my shoulders,
I would have obtained pure satisfaction,
After all is said and done,
If I stand up for the glory of something worthwhile.
I have climbed up to that stage in life
Where I perceive everything working out right for me
Whether in peace or thro adversity.
So if in my quest to achieve
I stumble and underachieve
My pride will not be the praise I receive
But the grace by which I did live.

Akpan



Day 19: Where Desire is Born


At a point in life
Everybody falls for something.
It might bring you peace or strife
Still there is always that special something;
A solitary desire
That ignites your passion like consuming fire.
Giving wings to your dreams
And yes! Sometimes, often go unfulfilled.
I have wandered on the verge of discovery,
Only to be blighted by the cause of searching.
What is it I search for?
That my soul will not exist but fall for?
But I must continue searching
Though it brings me to my knees.
It burns my heart like hot coals
Impossible to ignore.
I’m headed down the long and winding road,
Like once before,
That place where desire is born.
Not knowing what I might find
But I won’t stop until I bind.

Akpan



Day 18: The Challenge


Nothing can come between us
And the talent that Divinity placed within us.
We are His handwritten opus
If we got balls to make ourselves heard,
And when we pluck the fruit of genius
We cease to flow with instinct of the herd.
There’s a part of an individual
That stays locked up in talent-inert,
Trapped like a cage-mental,
Waiting for that one moment in time,
When the giant awakes
Piercing the horizon with an infrared beam;
When a new dawn breaks,
To set the whole world at liberty,
Thro the invasion of creativity.

Akpan



Day 17: Invention's Hour


Let your imagination run wild
Like wild cattle on the green hills
Of Obudu countryside
Lay hold on all your heart seeks
But try anything once
Then flow with the rhythm like a folksong
You can dictate the tune
If you paid the price
You can blow on Destiny’s flute;
Call your sun, like an enchanted cobra, to rise
Without reflux out of a creative mind
Until it literally razes the illusory sky
Invest in your imaginative power
Cause it’s the only way you triumph
In invention’s hour

Akpan



Saturday, April 16, 2016

Day 16: Turn the Page

It's my birthday!

It’s my birthday today
And I ran out of words to say.
It feels weird feeling this way
But it’s not the first time the void’s held sway.
But I gatto do what I gatto do,
I gatto be true to all that’s true
And show the world that I came through
And thrived despite the stuff I went thro.
So here’s a token of courage
Dished out on a plate of rage;
My heart’s been strengthened by age
And life keeps turning the page.

Akpan



Friday, April 15, 2016

Day 15: Now of the Future


Hear the words that I speak
You forces of adversity,
Intimidating me with weapons of war;
I am the strength of a worm
Wriggling yet steady flattening toughened structures.
I will yet be the Now of the future.
I am defiant in my quest,
However my soul is oppressed,
Completely persuaded in my request.
The challenges I face
Will churn out my point of grace.
Then I will stand
And, in this place,
Take my spot on a pedestal
Clutching triumph like a mace,
(Everything’s eventual).

Akpan



Day 14: Stand As 10,000


Sometimes, the sun might rise in the west
And set in the east
Scorching the skies like a fire-breathing beast.
Often at such times
We are found in the garden of the
Hurricane’s eye.
The logs of rut that lie in our path
Inevitably give way and depart.
We find the inner mystery willing
Evoking details of passion
Swift in its gushing
Like a fountain spewing out a ocean.
There we rediscover our selves
Only to be lost in the revelation of the true self.
Suddenly,
Veiled oracles speak
With the silence of the seas
Narrating explicit secrets
In recently familiar mysteries.
Bidding the we of ourselves
To crack out of hardened shells
Calling us to stand as ten thousand
And get our butts off the shelf.

Akpan



Day 13: Survivor Attitude


I fight for a right I was born to breathe
Erasing obstacles from the picture,
As I formulate street literature,
From my mental street scriptures.
There is no mountain I can’t move
My survivor attitude
Keeps feeding me with rage on the altitude.
I battle my demons,
It’s a whole ton of fun
Than playing dungeons and dragons.
The sky is not an alternative
Absolutely negative
But I’m feeling positive.
The road I navigate is a jungle
But I’m persuaded I will not tumble.
Cause every experience keeps me humble.
The storm blows hard
But I can’t turn back
I pulled up my knapsack
Hitchhiking toward my dream as I eat up the track.
I got greater expectations
Than Dickens’s Copperfield
Could in a million orphan generations.
I can picture destiny busting on the horizon
Sunrising like a dome.
See me breaking the deluge
Like glass, brother, I’m busting loose.

Akpan




Thursday, April 14, 2016

Day 12: Fall Apart


I can’t fall apart,
Definitely not now.
Even though the wind is ripping my sails to shreds.
The horrendous storm is breaking in
And breaking up the decks
Of my soul.
I can feel the back recesses crumbling.
Forbidden darkness taking its toll.
Still I’m not giving in
To this haunting feeling,
My center of being will hold,
My weaknesses will conquer deterring strength.
Not now, when I’m this close,
Splicing splintered mental fragments
In this unsettling of everything rational.
If the degree of complications turn out to be unusual;
Even if my walls fall through,
Quitting will be the last thing I do.

Akpan




Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Day 11: My Shine


How do I even begin to live?
When I can hardly breathe?
It's obviously impossible to apprehend
Those things one cannot easily comprehend
My life is on the same wavelength with misery
It's insane
And to all intents, unattainable,
Cause I can’t resolve this humane parable
That I have come to accept as my life
And tho I try
I only find that I reside in the womb of pain
If I gatto keep up with this rage
I have no doubt that my heart will quit existing
 I’m dead wary of resisting
When I gatto die
I pray before then, I do get my shine.

Akpan



Sunday, April 10, 2016

Day 10: Heaven I'll Never Find


I look out the windows of my eyes
Straight into this reality of my life,
I struggle in the attempt to define
What I see.
What prosperity resides in imputed poverty?
I lead a life that’s purpose-defeated,
In a world that strives for perfection
In deliberate error; what could be worse?
Baby boy runs without an education,
Cause the powers that be
Want my little kobos to pay their pension.
How will I survive?
Where the only way out is to die?
I live in dangerous times.
That cannot be denied.
The hate weighs so heavily on me
It’s impossible to delete its memory.
Then again as the years fly by,
I stubbornly seek that heaven I dig
I will never find.

Akpan



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