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

Empathy Mode

Courtesy: UNHCR

Don't breathe a word

Just cuddle me to your heart.

I long for silent comfort

Till shredding fear becomes art. 

Let our heartbeats

Sound a blended discord

While one runs the scales

Let the other hammer the chords. 

Let our breathing raise a chorus

As we inhale the pause,

Let our exhales be the crescendo

And our chestheaves even out the tempo. 

Sing me like a song

Stroke me like ebony and ivory

On your digital keyboard

Wrap up my broken tones in harmony. 

If only you'd cuddle me to your heart.

It's all I ask

And more than I could ever ask. 

Akpan

The Syrian

Ain't his motherland yet he's bopping
Talk 'bout an ant walking an elephant
Like a soulful tune Germany's port's humming
Once a refugee now a hero of the land
The Syrian certainly got something to prove.

Akpan

Destruction Makes Power

For want of threads of dialogue

A city heads down to the morgue,

And there the ill-fated bullock

Got its horns wrapped around a deadlock.

Out of hatred

Destruction makes power,

Life once sacred

Is spat out like dry powder,

Things gone to a head

Now fall down dead.

Syria

She is by horror haunted,

Rhymes with myriad

As a bomb-tide erases the wasted

Until those 40% bleed or sleep.

The darkness is complete.

Akpan

Everything Lost

Courtesy: UNHCR

Nothing to hide

Because they lost everything;

The unhinging look in their eyes

Speaks volumes on life that’s empty,

Fleeing home they found an excuse

For a bettered sense of purpose

They threw their all down and fused

And then watch their lives decompose.

Live and let die

They’ve seen the end of everything,

Stuck in a rut it sure is tough to ride

Who gets school? Who reaps nothing?

The specter of inequality threw sucker

Punches and blew it right out the water;

You don’t get what you deserve life sucks

How do you start over when you lost it all?

Akpan

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Who They Want

Courtesy: UNHCR/Dominic Nahr

This is the seventh in a poetry series created from lyrics of musical classics.

The piece you are about to read begins with the seventh line of the song “Easy” by Lionel Richie.

Everybody wants me to be who they want me to be.

But I’m just swingin’ and making merry being myself.

They talk such trash around me it’s hard to imagine

Not feeling put away like a bird stuck in its cage cell

But I defined myself for myself no doubt cause I am

This close to decoding an overdrive translation of me,

They spit every answer in the form of a questionnaire

It’s complicated to escape but ama stand and stay free,

And stay true to the original plan it’s the only way I see

Myself crossing that river leaving behind this negativity,

Until I pull all the plugs I’ll never really dig the reason

Everybody wants me to be who they want me to be.

Akpan

Leaving You

Courtesy: UNHCR/Achilleas Zavallis

This is the second in a series of poetry created from lyrics of musical classics.

The piece you are about to read begins with the second line of the song

“Easy” by Lionel Richie.

Girl, I’m leaving you tomorrow.

Give your best kiss to mama tell her I said so

It’s cold out there on the routes I’ll plow

But I aint much good to you if I hung around

Think of me as your own human anchor;

That person you let go when you need him most.

I may never find my way back home again

I don’t even have a roadmap for the journey I make,

I make no promises I only hope you’ll understand

Someday when you ripen into a full-blown woman

I’m sorry baby but there’s something you must know;

Girl, I’m leaving you tomorrow.

Akpan

Can't Stand the Pain

Courtesy: UNHCR/Andre McConnell

This is the first of a series of poetry created from lyrics of musical classics.

The piece you are about to read begins with the first line of the song “Easy”

by Lionel Richie. In the next six or seven poems I’m going to pick subsequent

lines of that great song to jump-start each new piece.

I know it sounds funny but I just can’t stand the pain.

The sun’s pitched at 12 o’ clock but the storm won’t abate

It’s rage all over; I’m several miles into this insanity

When all hell spills over who’s gon’ set my soul free?

I was halfway there before they blew the final whistle

Not that I was late in coming; my effort wasn’t useful.

I crossed the river so many times I lost count already.

How much longer before my dreams hit the cemetery?

I wonder what it takes to last in this fading existence,

If anything besides pain can lay claim to consistence

If there’s no point of reference, aint no reason to aim.

I know it sounds funny but I just can’t stand the pain.

Akpan

Otherside

Photo Courtesy: UNHCR (@Refugees)
For Syrian Refugees

Will I make it to the otherside?

Beyond this grave of dreams;

That special place where the imagination

Explodes in daylight?

My soul barely exists

Waiting thirstily for the delights

Of fulfillment in a world

Where patience is defeated.

It's hard not to kick against the goads

Cause the times is ill fated.

The quest for glory

Drains me and fills me with rage,

The road to immortality is paved

With hate-induced goals.

Yet mortal men thrust into it blinded

Multiplying well-avoidable throes.

But will I ever fill that space

And appropriately

Obtain the good grace

To equip the man of my dreams

With a tool to win in this spiteful race?

Akpan

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