Poem #1283: Magartu Dedefi, Esq.

Magartu lost her sight as a toddler. At age eight,
she was forced to flee her home in Ethiopia.
She settled in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya
where she excels her peers in academics.
She dreams of becoming a lawyer.
Photo Courtesy: UNHCR

And still we see her rise

Walking on the sunshine

Her face lit up in a halo

That forecasts tomorrow

In live and living color

From war

To take the world

She blind

But she ain't no beggar

She looks just fine

And all set to be a lawyer

Her big dreams

Rattle the glass ceiling

She won't balk

In the face of competition

With her peers

Who ain't visually impaired

She lost her sight

But found the fight

For people deprived

Of their rights

As a platform to thrive

And her smile says it all

She knows she has it all

On her own terms

She wants it her way

No freebies, on equal terms

She'll rest her case.

Akpan

Bridge To Tigray

The destroyed Tigray-Amhara bridge key access to
humanitarian aid to Tigray. The Ethiopian government
has been accused of trying to suffocate the Tigray region.
Photo Courtesy: latimes.com

Hope deferred

Makes the heart sick

Like shattered louver

Laying the silt on thick

The heart hardly holds still

When a cold wind howls

Straight thru the cowls

To batter a betrayed soul

Hear the bell toll.

Shudda been a ray of peace

In a place of gloom

'Stead you blow your people to bits

And make rubble of their boon.

How do you sleep thru the nights?

Do you turn off the lights?

Have you no shame,

Drawing diagrams of hate

With the blood of your kindred

Like a man gone over the bend?

Playing God

Is plain dumb

When you're down

Burning bridges

You's a clown

Sliding locks on hinges.

You turn on the dark,

Suffocate a region

Like a concentration camp,

Pile a shoal of carrion,

Soon to hit a million

Disregard all opinion

Ain't no answer to a fragile union.

When you take out a bridge

The quest for peace is breached

So people trade feelings for fridge

And payback's a bitch.

Cause a bridge

Is a promise that don't renege

A bridge

Is a lifeline during a siege

A bridge

Is tedious humanitarian access abridged

You do not divide

If you intend to unite.

Akpan

House Of Glass

Tigrayan refugee children waiting in line for breakfast.

For months, the Ethiopian army and its coalition partner Eritrea have been creating famine by destroying everything essential for human survival – food and farms, clinics and hospitals, water supplies – and blocking humanitarian aid. Mass killings have been documented by human rights organisations. The Telegraph obtained – and verified – shocking video footage of Ethiopian soldiers rounding up and murdering a group of young men. Soldiers have raped thousands of women and girls, subjecting many of them to extraordinarily cruel torture. There are tens of thousands of unaccompanied children, their mothers either held captive in army camps or sheltering in safe houses and clinics, traumatized and terrified, and not knowing what has happened to their little ones. — Telegraph.co.uk

 

Living in a house of glass

Presumes the resident's character

Is a house of class,

And a shade deeper than his avatar.

That's a nod to you, Ethiopia,

Eating yourself up like cancer

Working a body against its organs.

You dash your people's hearts

Against the bedrocks

To your personal hurt,

Have you counted the cost?

Cause this is the shoe nail

That got a Kingdom lost,

Cause what you got

Is multinational aid workers

Totally getting offed,

With constant closure of your borders

When fighting intensifies to stall

Access to humanitarian assistance

Proves y'all stuck on the comeuppance

Eritrean soldiers are bringing up the rear

And hell may care

If Tigray's strung on a repeat nightmare.

I thought y'all used to be one nation?

Why y'all in a hurry to suck

On one and the other's blood?

Why can't y'all just get along?

Akpan

No Words

Three Doctors Without Borders medical charity
employees were found killed in a brutal act of murder.
This is for aid workers, Maria Yohaness and Tedros.
Photo Courtesy: msf.org

No words

Can convey our shock

No words

Can soothe the loss

And suffering of the loved ones

Of aid workers, Maria, Yohaness

And Tedros,

To whom we relay our condolences.

Cut down in Ethiopia's Tigray region

In a brutal act of murder,

No words

Can portray this cruel slaughter.

The three aid workers who died

Were in Tigray saving lives,

And they paid for their work

With an heroic sacrifice.

No words

Can paint the gruesome attack

On the spanish, Maria

And the two Ethiopians,

Yohaness and Tedros

Cause the act goes beyond words,

No Words

Should be spared in the execution

Of a peaceful resolution

In Ethiopia's Tigray region.

Still no words

Would sound sweeter

Than we got the murderers

Chained down in tethers.

Akpan

Residual

Abdo, Lebanese IDP
Photo Courtesy: UNHCR

We y'all smug

As froth in a mug.

And we don't even ask why

Our moment of truth resides in a lie. 

Our days go boom,

Our nights is gloom.

One man brings harm with guns

While the other's armed with bombs.

Our sunset on Tigray,

Here's where the moon fell down,

And here, and here. Kale's the entrée. 

We love that sound

It's the rhythm of death pangs.

Hell's busybody gang

Pitched tent

In the place where we are;

Love's spent.

A blow will mend a scar.

Akpan

Where You Go To Know You're Alive

Click the image to get there. 
Courtesy: UNHCR

Love is a place in your heart

Where you go to know you're alive.

All you do is press start

And soon you're eating up the miles.

Love can be anything

Can't nothin'  be love but love;

It's the smile you give a kid,

In the whisper of 'Refugees Welcome.'

In that space,

Friendship has a face,

Sharing holds the ace,

And compassion wins the race.

There are no walls

To block feelings between us.

If we can be there

For each other, show we care,

We'll get there. 

Akpan

Trying To Survive The Night

Courtesy: UNHCR

Don't wanna know how the sun

Travels round the moon.

And seriously speaking, I'm not

In the complicated mood

For a geography of tall stories.

I'm bringing my theory

Down to earth,

To us grounded in a hearth.

I'm all about the chemistry

Of self-annihilation

I'm up for a study in human tragedy

On which the race of man is sprung.

Bring out all the bombs

Throw some Uzi in the lineup,

It's the school of hard knocks.

Love don't live here.

This is where gore rocks,

Where pregnant women flee for fear.

Here it's ok to kidnap girls for ransome,

To hold school boys hostage

Even if it's just to prove a point.

Hope we still on the same page?

In point of fact, why not lose the book,

We all know these things get cooked?

Let's do this by word of mouth,

Why the river of humanity flows south.

We slot peace in the ballot box

And then harvest absolute bollocks.

It's trend of the time

And we blend 'n grime,

Now here's something we gatto do

This depends on me as you;

Shoot your hands in the sky

If you've seen enough people die. 

Akpan

Long Story Short

Courtesy: UNHCR

After all has been said and done

Like phantom tears from the heart of the sun,

The lust for war gives rise to refugees

Passion for bloodshed sprouts displaced persons.

After all that's said is the bomb

That empties Tigray into Sudan,

Then the slugs of a gun is enough

To send Shona scurrying to Kenya.

All that's said

And all that's done

Wakes the walking dead

And evokes a world undone;

People absolved of all feeling

Eat the heart of the living.

We bleed when they feel the need

To redeem the essence of their greed. 

Akpan