All She Wants

Courtesy: UNHCR
Click on the link in the image/text. Thanks. 

All she wants

Is not some Jack 'n a box

Or an epiphany shot from a canon

Not even a boy

Who brings the noise,

To keep as a toy.

All she wants

Ain't a fairytale ploy,

And she don't play coy

Cause she ain't no Helene of Troy. 

All she wants

Is a doctor

For a boy both deaf and dumb

And who's rather stuck in his bunk. 

Meanwhile, she'll get an education

Our lady of valor,

So she could be her brother's physician. 

See all she wants

Is not the the wand of a magician

But a chance

To be the shero of her circumstance. 

All she wants

Is not to pull a stunt.

She's just a refugee,

Dying for the rarest opportunity:

To redeem the cause of her family,

Her own corner to serve humanity. 

All she wants

Is to feel needed,

To restore her dignity. 

That's all she wants,

Cause on her inside way deep down,

She knows everybody counts. 

Akpan

Kitsa G.

The homely Greek lady who sheltered kids from
war-torn Syria in her home. The children fondly
call her, Kitsa Granny.
Photo Courtesy: UNHCR video

Can I call you Kitsa Granny?

Would I be a bother

If I wet your shoulder

With tears that make me shudder?

Will you push me until I swing high

And catch hope as it flutters like a butterfly?

Ring up war and say, 'Eat your shame!'

There's no home bests Kitsa Granny's embrace.

We have reasons to call you Granny

You're family we never knew we had

Blood that mended these broken shards

You've made us the sum of the part.

Akpan

Houdini Girl

 

When Yusra Houdini (I mean Mardini) fled from Syria to Europe, her boat’s engine died and it began to take on water, Yusra pushed the boat towards Greece for 3.5 hours. She swam for her life and lived to swim for the first Refugee Olympic Team (ROT) at the Rio Olympics.

They all could have gone to heaven in a lil’ rowboat

Fetching the blind denouement to lives built on tragedies.

They thought it was the end of a beautiful anecdote

But your charm and grace brought a twist to the story,

Plotting a route thro troubled waters like a sea creature

You were the courage-fueled motor that found a landfall,

A personality having in herself facility to produce light.

Hardiness of your heart has percolated into souls to ignite

And crystallize minds that otherwise was habitat to despair.

You are the dream and the hope of 21 million battle-scarred.

Akpan

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Eyes on the Prize (I)

I fall upon the thorns of life

And my senses dim as hypnotized.

But for those obstinate questionings

That released the springs within me,

The paradise I cherish in my dreams

Would be the illusion of a Greek necessity.

Call it mutual paradox

And let loose the dogs of war.

Polemics is killing me.

Between omega and infinity,

My soul traverses independently.

Can you picture a sparrow

Slicing the air at the speed of an arrow?

My attitude

Is the bedrock of a champion’s hypothesis.

Opposition’s got no clue

All wound up like helixes.

My special affinity

To lethal lyrical dexterity

Put the thrust in my mobility,

Set me up in a big way;

Placed me on top of the game.

Now I play

In the wrath of a menace.

My rage

Is the register of a blast furnace.

I’m after the last badge of victory

In which the burden of the mystery

Is glorified

By the blessings of sacrifice.

The world keeps waiting for a surprise;

A non-relapsing evidence of soul-surrender,

A role-model who survived the slaying of the Egyptian.

Pain

Only puts the fuel on my rage

Cause it can’t stall me.

In the niche of the rarest depth of prosperity,

I engage the fiercest adversity.

My battles unleash me

Into a realm of unspoken seductions.

Before I reached my destination,

My destiny comes through

To replenish the times like the morning dew.

I keep my head up in the skies,

I keep my eyes on the prize.

Akpan

Related articles

• I knew a woman: Theodore Roethke
• ON the discipline of gettng ready to. Another look
• SZ. To Infinity and Beyond: Tuning and Triuning the Paradox. pp.433-482.