Dragons of Home

This war on terror is a lot more about the victims-the dead, the displaced,
the missing-than the psychos wreaking havoc. We shouldn't lose sight of
the big picture and end up defeated.
On the side, what do you think they did to this poor girl to make her strap
explosives around her waist? This is our future going up in smoke.

You’re not here n’ how the clause spawns an electric

Arc that saturates this terrain in a wakeless gray rage

I can still hear your voices carried on the night wind,

Deep down the cove where I tuck my private self away,

Full and inextinguishable as it rides down the throes

Of cruel death and irreversible moldering of the bones;

You come to me in my quietude and unknot the knots

And as the puzzle sorts itself out a shape starts to form;

A friend’s face bending in and out of form taunting me

Begging not to be an option but a number one priority

You’re not here and I’m not there and the difference is

All the world but I won’t turn the page and close my eyes

To the heat, it’s the thorn in my flesh that only I must pick

If I must find peace. It’s all about you, it’s hi time I realize

This war aint about Shekau but you free to breathe, to be,

To dig into all of life’s peculiarities as experience hands it

Down the tube. You deserve the attention and compassion

Showered on you and the memories of you will still live on,

That is one fine article of this assurance I will never break

Until triumph busts open the gates bearing you in its wake.

Akpan

Switched

For all those years I thought the Boko Haram insurgency was
an extended spell of the infamous Northern Nigeria riots

Incomplete, that’s the definition of me without a you

It’s taken me a while but the blinders are down it’s true.

I’ve seen my wrong I know I’ve been such a fool not to.

Unfeeling had me like and I said, ‘It’ll pass.’ That’s cruel.

Why do I visualize paradise but get paralyzed

By the sight of you otherwise immortalized?

I’ll rime till it’s sunrise n’ your night turns brite,

Time I switched sides, be a bona fide paradigm.

‘A few more days,’ I said, ‘and it’ll be gone with the wind.’

While you died in plain sight I let fear lax my heartstrings,

But time taught me not to wait for what tomorrow brings;

I am what brings tomorrow so I rise on a dayspring scream.

Why do I visualize paradise but get paralyzed

By the sight of you otherwise immortalized?

I’ll rime till it’s sunrise n’ your night turns brite,

Time I switched sides, be a bona fide paradigm.

Akpan

7 Day Theory

The earth was created in six days. Nigeria's war against
 terrorism entered its sixth year in 2015. It ends NOW.
2016 is our 7th day and there we will find our rest. It starts NOW.

There’s so much to live for why can’t we start living it now?

Straddle love and courage and faith; turn again our captivity;

Prepare a way and haul in peace like a river that abounds.

This is the year we initiate our miracle metamorphosis.

Lethal explosions have ripped us till we despaired for hope,

The three-fold cord of unity’s been strained to snapping point.

These six odd years we’ve been coerced to walk a tightrope,

Still we rise to every challenge and keep on believing in love.

For six years, we put our backs to the grind;

We sang of freedom and put our hopes on the line.

We got just one more ‘day’ then we rest from this tragedy,

And set the tone for our very own seven-day theory.

Akpan

Cellphone Conversation

This is a fictional phone conversation with the maniac Shekau She-Cow, written in verse. Let’s pretend the evil genius speaks any vocabularies besides Bang-Bang! Boom-Boom! His words are in BOLD type.

Am I speaking with She-Cow?

This is Shekau...

Alhaji Abubakar Shekau

Whatever, Shay COW.

So, what's all the rage?

I said this time and again;

My mission is to cut ‘Western’ culture off this nation.

Isn't that why you're on the internet... to spread the message?

Well, yeah, I needed a medium of expression...

And a ‘Western’ medium seemed most appropriate?

That about sums it up.

That's the kind of attitude that gets people bombed.

Is that a threat?

Because I missed the part where I get scared.

I just want to tell my side of the story and be heard...

Well She-Cow, your side of the story sucks...

I blow up school kids for a holy cause...

Is that a synonym for ‘masochistic lunatic?’

You wouldn't know a thing about my cause

So I suggest you don't insult.

Are we discussing that Devil Theory which warps minds, makes

Men strap explosives all around their waists and make

Waste of everything that breathes within a 10-block radius?

My motives are strictly religious...

Sheez, you got it all sorted out, genius.

Why don’t you tell that to the dead school kids.

You're so full of shit...

Or maybe, your time is up...

This war will not be over until I've bombed you all...

Is that the stink of your corpse I smell as it rots?

That's all empty talk. And you know it.

It's over. Can you not feel...

Ha! Ha! I don't see your armed forces

Putting one dent in my offensive.

It's got nothing to do with sophisticated weapons;

We won because your toys couldn't split a great nation.

How much longer, do you reckon, would that remain reality...?

Listen hard. Don’t you hear the exploding silence of your bombs?

You should feel damn lucky you live down south....

And you really ought to make your last moments on earth count,

Start putting what's left of your household in order, militarized tout.

Because we will hunt you like vermin and we will stamp you out.

You got big mouth...

You’re living on borrowed time, traitor. I'm out.

Akpan

Postikum

I'm just a face in the crowd.

But I see friendships that might have been;

Smiles that would’ve smoothed out the crease on my brow.

I ease my mind into fickle wishful thinking

And let it wander where human dignity still holds a charm.

And right there, at the center of all radiance is us;

Just us two, bragging and shoving and fearing no harm.

Then reality crashes in like foam-tipped breakers on the shore;

I hear your screams rise from within a fiery grave.

I hear you yell out my name but I am M.I.A.

I see you grope with burning rage for aid that never came;

I feel the deathly heat as your lungs burst, from a distant place.

The terror gnaws at my heart and threatens to rip it out.

You thought I had your back but I'm the one who let you down.

You thrust out charred limbs and clawed at the empty air

What I had to do was grab your hand but I was not there.

I see dead people strewn like waste disposed of at a landfill;

I see young destinies six feet deep in a grave of dreams.

So I scribbled a line to you in that place I cannot yet come,

A monument of words flung up through the voice of one.

I'm just a face in the crowd.

If I’m dead to you it’s because you’re out cold;

If you’re dead to me I should hang with Shekau

How I remember you molds how my story unfolds.

Akpan

Season of Sacrifice

And I know where my happiness lies;

My salvation unfolds before my eyes.

I anticipate feverishly, the morning of evil's demise

Thus my pen shall never run dry until it is realized,

Until I obtain true justification for this sacrifice.

Devastated and cornered though they may be,

Our outcome is tied to their outcome by destiny’s strings.

Our survival is as slim as the vapor of their dying breath.

If we forget them, who we are perishes in their death.

Cause the tragedy is not to die but to be wasted.

Daily, the fate of thousands arrive upon a nightmare,

Spun out like the thread of a graphic horror story.

Day and night their pastime is a game called terror and fear.

Our organs rot and decay and all we do is drag our feet;

They live on the edge of death, blinded by tears.

“The summer has passed

The harvest has ended

But we are not saved.”

Akpan

Who We Be

Happy Independence Day, Nigeria!
So many tribes, ethnicity, dialects yet, so much love!

In the voice of B’ Haram victims

We don’t die we multiply

Right beyond the grave we stir up a rip-roaring legacy.

Death has been reassigned;

Decay clobbers the camp of the adversary.

We’ve acquired the laurels of our sacrifice

The feat is fused into the framework of history.

We don’t die.

We was planted and we thrived.

The fluid thru our veins is green

And our voices erupt still in the street.

We heard the critical retort;

The ratata of a lethal report

Declared you have been uninstalled.

Cause you didn’t belong in the tribe.

But we don’t die.

We just flow true like that great rushing river

In which over 300 tribes wash and pass the time.

We don’t die. We’re Nigeria.

Akpan

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