Be A King

Sunday March 28th, was Ms. Bernice A. King's
(MLK's youngest child) 58th Birthday 🎉.
This verse is a tribute.
Photo Courtesy: @BerniceKing (Twitter) 

I want to Be A King 👑

Who showers love like blingy bling

I'm goin' to flaunt my dream like a diamond ring 💍

And raise my voice till Freedom's bells ding🔔

I wanna be the force that bring

Relief to the weak urging 'em to cling.

I want to Be A King 👑

That makes justice swing

Low on the eternal string

Raise a song my people, with one voice, fling

Up to rain down a soulful spring.

I want to make hate cringe 😬

Like Covid against the syringe 💉

When it feels me on the fringe

Of manifesting a joy binge.

I wanna be the action that takes the sting 🐍

Off racism till it rots and stinks,

Bust a word from my sling

Nail it before it slinks.

And since it's my birthday 🎉 🎂

Why don't I wing't?

Pour out some juice n' celebrate 🥂

Like a chip off a real King. 👑

Akpan

What Yesterday May Bring

Nigeria: Another sunset or a new sunrise? 

Like when the question

Is written on the screen

But the answer is locked

Up in the ill wind

Like when you is witness

To some final burial rites

But as yet the crucial element

Has, by no means, arrived.

We beckon to the last straw

That will serve as trigger

To the imminent implosion

Yet we're in this together

Though maybe, not forever

So we need to show

A measure of mature

In the way we go

At tearing up our structure.

We are perched at a precarious angle

Fighting gravity as we dangle

Hanging to a history of conflict-spangled

Unity that's got us trapped in a tangle.

The bombs we detonated,

To guns we reiterated,

The slash of the machete,

Innards strewn like spaghetti,

Are pointers of the national eclipse

Playing like trailers for horror flicks.

How long? Not long

Before we climb the hill

To walk through the valley of

The substance of diversity.

We must break out of our shells

Step up from these ethnic cells,

Knot a cord on a 3-fold string

To stoke what yesterday may bring.

In this place where we stand,

Each one of us holds in their hand

A kindling spark.

If we all torch this fragile Union

Will it forge an eternal communion?

We must answer for the next generation.

Akpan

Ailerons

Meet Maya Ghazal,
The first ever female Syrian refugee pilot.
Photo Courtesy: @ghazalmia (Twitter)

I never believed I could fly ✈️

Not until I turned refugee on the fly

That was when I looked out to the runway

And when my gaze landed on an airstrip,

All at once, I became a fuselage.

Now all I needed was wings

And a thrust and a lift.

I'd unlocked the door through which

I bust into my legit takeoff 🛫.

I was really excited to start over,

Here was my shot at a major makeover

There was this deep hunger to ride my storms

On the dynamics of ailerons

That morphed into a searing passion

To soar among the stars

And be redeemed from the stigma

Of these war-etched scars.

Now the world may see a refugee on wings

And that's alright, cause I really had big dreams.

But I'm already staring thru a window

Into endless possibilities

And a brighter tomorrow.

Akpan

The Freedom We Try For

Gunmen abduct school children
in Nigeria's Niger State.
Photo Courtesy: France24.com

Freedom's chains

Guarantee some things may never change

When we ride

We ride high

Trucking together in a pile

Like cattle shipping on a one-way train.

Constant thoughts of imminent derail

Hum like a sequined refrain

Reenacting the monsters we engage.

And tho we ought to be ashamed,

We're pointing fingers

Serving the next dude the blame.

The center can't wait out the teeter,

Seems we're at the end of our tether.

With one voice

We chant, 'One nation

Bound in freedom,'

Yet the copious maelstrom

That engulfs the federation

Can't hold a candle to Herod's dungeon.

Our freedom enslaves us

Exploiting our captivity

Within our own geographical radius,

It undermines the concept of unity:

We y'all a burden one to another,

Can't get off the other's shoulder.

We're the product of a glitch

Of a rambling colonial leech.

But it's time to put the past

Where it belongs: in the past.

That we'll be able to transform

The jangling discords of our nation

Into a beautiful symphony of brotherly compassion.

And run Nigeria, our country

Into the ground,

For good.

Or negotiate one final turnaround,

For me and for you.

Akpan

03/13

Breonna Taylor was shot dead by cops
while sleeping in her boyfriend's home
 during a botched police raid. No police
 officer was convicted for her death.
Photo Courtesy: @Berniceking (Twitter)

Taylor

My verse for Breonna,

Weave it on a tapestry of valor

This scene be like the setting of a thriller,

A real-life nightmare on the rocks,

Cops come creeping all up your block

Yous in there sleeping but still get slugged.

No conviction for the killer in the cops

And the system that endorse the corpse

They shoot and shrug it under a copse

Of their flawed laws.

But louder than shots

In the still of the night

Is the voice of my words:

Now's the time to get it right,

Now's the time to hit the lights.

Come, take out the logs

From your moral eyes

And see the desolation

Your denial did device;

This is a stand

For the race of man,

A fight for justice for Breonna,

Because black lives matter.

And if somebody mutters,

'Is he for real?

That brother he just dreaming.'

Tell 'em 'Please, don't wake him up.'

Cause I won't stop

Till I get to the mountaintop.

Akpan

14 Goin' On Dead

George Stinney, was only 14 when he was sentenced to death
by electrocution for a crime he did not commit. In 1944, he was
accused of killing two white girls. Cops said he confessed
to the crime, there were no witnesses, no evidence,
no written confession signed by George himself.
In 2014, a judge exonerated him posthumously. 

If I was fourteen

And not marked for death,  I'll be destined

To hold in my palm, the whim

To achieve greater works than these.

If I was fourteen,

I'll live free,

I'll have a dream like Dr. King

And Be A King.

I'll live for justice

Like Gorman than be at just ease.

If I was fourteen

I'll be a real OG,

Original, genius cause I was born to breathe.

I'll chair over the electric

Boogie, woogie, get you apoplectic.

If I was fourteen

And won a scholarship,

I'll go real hard on hardship

And be the cap'n of my ship.

If I was fourteen,

I'll be on the dream team

Black and educated with skills

The most dangerous weapon indeed.

If I was fourteen

I'll bring injustice to its knees

I'll knock the love of power till it keens

And rock the power of love so it keels

Over and shatters every hate that kills.

But y'all can't be fourteen

Not if the law wants you dead

Cause your butt ain't whitened.

'Nough said.

Akpan

Crackdown

As the army cracks down on peaceful protesters after the coup,
the violence that is commonplace in the countryside
serves as a grisly reminder of the military legacy of atrocities.
— New York Times
Courtesy: @nytimes (Twitter)

We're strangers in a familiar place

Confined to our homes in a solid cage. 

The things that ought

To work for our salvation,

Wakes a trail of desolation.

In my homeland

Blood runs thicker than sand,

Freedom put a stake thru our hearts:

Freedom to express who we are,

Freedom to choose our own path,

Freedom to demonstrate

And not get shot at;

Freedom to have our say

On who runs the affairs of state.

It's hard to get past

The image in your mind,

'Specially when you got stabbed

By your own tool, from behind.

They threw our leaders in jail

Our women keep getting raped.

It's the only way, or they're dead…

With gunshot wounds to the head.

Soldiers patrolling every street,

So now it's kill season

And dead bodies keep increasing

Yet nobody's out to give one reason,

Asking question's perceived treason.

But we still bleeding

And the junta ain't ceding

Yet the whole world ain't heeding

So, who are we kidding? 

Akpan

What A Woman

A tribute to women of all age levels on
the International Women's Day. 
Courtesy: UNHCR

What manner of woman is this?

When she walks, she walks phenomenally.

When she sprinkles her sunshine,

And weaves her unique touch of magic,

She molds her own shrine

Where she makes the lonely a homie,

And gets the isolated homely.

When she makes an entry,

Even the hopeless dare to breathe.

The aura

She exudes redeems the weak.

What manner of woman

Heals all within

The stretch of her arms?

She's a mother,

She's a daughter,

She's a sister,

She's a friend,

She's a lover,

And a leader.

She won't bend

To get you over.

But she'll lend a hand

To help you stand tall.

She's the manner of woman

Ready to take the world,

By its balls.

Akpan

Joseph's Wars

Due to escalating violence arising after the general elections,
Joseph has fled his country, the CAR, for the third time.
Courtesy: UNHCR

Creeping

Like a thief

In the still of the night,

They sped under the starlit

Central African sky.

Sprinting not for the calling

Of the coveted Olympic prize

But for the mortal privilege

Of witnessing another, be it cold, night.

Theirs is a heart-wrenching

Suicidal, sickening story.

Once was it said

But thrice have I heard,

A young man fled home

Not for a crime of his own

Making

But for the volent awakening

That rocked a nation off her heels.

Peace spat in his face

With the sound of gunshot sprays.

'It's the third time. I am tired,'

Joseph says, and his situation is dire.

What is the measure of hate required

To turn on an encore bloodletting?

And whence is the streams of healing

For the afflicted?

My people

Are marked for death

And their chronicle

Is as fuel for the hearth.

Akpan

A 70km Sacrifice

Haskins, a Zimbabwean refugee made a 70 kilometer journey
to safety on foot. He has received a full academic scholarship
to study business at Botho University. 
Courtesy: UNHCR

Only cowards hate on school

And grow up becoming fools

Who argue with their tools.

School do make you cool

And helps in sharpening your tool

So that you don't take bull

From a crew screwed up so tight

You gotta loosen some screws

To get them walking upright.

You see, school don't end with books

School is the mastery of your skills.

School is taking personal drills

Long after the echoes of the school bell

Has receded into the mind's well.

That's why it's only you

Can put you through school.

This one's straight up personal:

You draw a line

And align your arsenal,

Then you step out with your head held up high.

Akpan