Day 20: One Shine

Photo Courtesy: somewhere on cyberspace

I’ll dip the skies in orange glow,

Speak forth the articles of dawn;

I’ll wake the morning with my flow,

Roll back the dark side of the horizon.

I’ll pierce the clouds with fingers of light

Shot from my corner of the earth.

I’ll rip apart the shroud of night;

Break the day like palm kernel shell.

I can see things clearly now.

My joy flows totally out of bounds.

My hands have worked my waking

Into the new day I’m breaking,

I’m turning the rain to the drain.

Kneading pregnant clouds to change,

But I brought the sun into my night;

Traded several dusks for one shine.

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

IntShoWriMo 2014: Day 20

Day 20: The Zone

Spring can at times seem like one long daydream. Does one of your characters have the habit of drifting off into a fantasy world? This week, write out one of these daydreams. Use plenty of surreal elements that make it clear this is a fantasy sequence and not just the character re-imagining a scenario working out a different way. "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber is a perfect example.

—PW.Org

Word Count: 1,000+

Eneh Akpan.
June 20th, 2014

Day 20: Insensitivity

Courtesy: Jo Jackson 

When the lil’ stars lose their flicker

And we sparsely wonder;

When nameless emotions dicker

With our recesses ripping spirit and soul asunder;

At such times when abominable taboos ride

On the voice of perception inside;

When the caged bird cannot invent a tune;

When the phoenix will not resurrect

From the ashes of its ruin;

In a time when peace will corrupt

And the depravity daily renewed;

When the falcon pays no heed to the falconer,

Love becomes expendable as loss,

Great gain is offspring of lust.

Leaders abuse authority,

Ghettos are the symbol of class inferiority.

When baby boys end up in some guy’s refrigerators,

We all have become callous and casual conspirators.

These are the times which we all live in

And respond to and have obtained a most crafty insensitivity.

Akpan

Day 20: Manual Disconnect

Photo: stuficionado.net

Straight out o’ the shadows of my past

I emerge like a torn off branch flung up by a blast,

And I invade the world’s stage like a seasoned cast,

As I rewrite my history, skillfully.

Touched not by the scars of slavery

But by the elements of mastery.

I have been forged by a unique pedigree

One whose entire bloodline has been kings.

I present my case

As one of a profoundly celebrated race;

And in this place of shame and disgrace

I have attained a special state of genuine grace.

A beautiful, reputable brew of Negro

Molded by circumstances I survived into human ammo.

Cause I heeded the voice calling beyond the heat of the inferno.

The days of my life are like a totem pole:

Every exhale represents something; I’m game.

I’m about erasing the account of shame,

And purging the stigma set on a name.

I am yesterday that will not vanish from memory;

I am today that persists indefinitely;

I am tomorrow, I am symbol of immortality.

The darkest phase of an eclipse,

I have ascended within a prophecy

To manifest as an article of potency.

And like an authentic, personified apocalypse,

I annihilate the blinded course of hypocrisy.

I have come to accept the reality of who I am;

A concrete representation of the Son of Man.

I multiply in billions like dust in the harmattan.

I pulled the plug on anything that stands against my identity,

And charged my faculty to disconnect from falsity.

Akpan