Cabo Delgado Desperados

They had dreams of becoming doctors and teachers.
But after an armed attack on their town in northern
Mozambique, they now fear for what their future holds.
                                                 — unhcr.org

And then you climb the hill

One step trailing the previous stint,

Bludgeoned by an unforgiving wind,

Only to find on the plains

Of the fruits of faith,

A daunting, towering mountain.

The hill you climb

Are stuff that blind

You so it's hard to find

The mountains are in your mind.

Just forget the things left behind

And face the boulders on the inside,

They're the logs stuck in your eye

That make you grapple with a pie

And sway you from the mark

Of the prize.

You do not need a Mack

To move the sands of time,

If you see a ghost,

You'll dissolve like tissue in rain

And if you know the ropes,

You can fly a mountain.

A city on a hill

Got no uses for a smokescreen,

If you ain't out for a kill,

You got no uses for your skill.

The hill is meant to get you under,

Freeze you in your track

Like a snake named anaconda.

The hill you climb

Is key to unlock your mind

Keep on grinding your grind

And you'll breathe your dreams to life.

Akpan

World War C

Refugee mother and child riding
a bike. In most countries, refugees are
excluded from Covid vaccinations.
Photo Courtesy: UNHCR

While men slept

His enemy crept

Up and sowed weed

Among the wheat.

And with morning came

A marauding plague

Of death and decay,

Making broken hearts reacquaint

The process of pain.

The extinction of the race

Is imminent

And Covid-19's now resident.

Folks be booking hospitals

Crawling all over the reception,

Like it's some exotic hotel's vestibule.

ICU Waiting Lists stretch long

Like the book of damnation

Cause patients sucking up oxygen

Faster than plants breed pathogens.

Refugees are the hardest hit

Cause they're denied nationality,

Nobody gives a pin

If they're healthy or sick.

But what if this Virus is man-made?

What if our research steps are ordained?

And we're programmed

On a wild goose chasing our tail?

What if we're left flat on our ass?

Perhaps, hope

Is not the only thing we have,

We might yet, dare to be bold

Cause we may yet redeem man

From a wave of pandemic

That refuses to die

But multiplies variants like a tick.

We fight an enemy that outright

Wastes us with impunity.

Akpan

The Poet 'n His Reflection

Courtesy: Twitter
It's time the nation of Israel and Palestine
worked out their differences

There's a man in the mirror

From his eyes a flash of doubt

Sparks a disavowal of his reflection,

Head shaking, he flat out

Plucks me off

And tosses me away

An attempt to render his

Own image unseen.

He'll apply a 'copy n' paste'

If he could photoshop his reality

And turn his back on the din

And close his heart to the scream.

But his painted demon

Haunts him as his reflection.

He's grabbing for me

Claws out stripping n' stripping

Away onion thick layers of feeling.

What I won't do

To put him in the groove

That only a fool

Argues with truth.

He sits on a time bomb

The scenes play out on the mirror,

But his mindset's deep-fried

He's strung

On the timeline

Inside the mirror

And treats as slight

The world next door

That he can reach out and touch:

The scourge of the coronavirus

The Gaza Conflict encores

The multiplied gun violence,

The famine pestilence

Gorging Yemen,

Hearts that's gone cold

Cause doors got all closed.

The billowing ash of gray

Showering hail over Tigray.

The endless graphic images

Whizzing past in blurry phases.

Akpan

Crackdown

As the army cracks down on peaceful protesters after the coup,
the violence that is commonplace in the countryside
serves as a grisly reminder of the military legacy of atrocities.
— New York Times
Courtesy: @nytimes (Twitter)

We're strangers in a familiar place

Confined to our homes in a solid cage. 

The things that ought

To work for our salvation,

Wakes a trail of desolation.

In my homeland

Blood runs thicker than sand,

Freedom put a stake thru our hearts:

Freedom to express who we are,

Freedom to choose our own path,

Freedom to demonstrate

And not get shot at;

Freedom to have our say

On who runs the affairs of state.

It's hard to get past

The image in your mind,

'Specially when you got stabbed

By your own tool, from behind.

They threw our leaders in jail

Our women keep getting raped.

It's the only way, or they're dead…

With gunshot wounds to the head.

Soldiers patrolling every street,

So now it's kill season

And dead bodies keep increasing

Yet nobody's out to give one reason,

Asking question's perceived treason.

But we still bleeding

And the junta ain't ceding

Yet the whole world ain't heeding

So, who are we kidding? 

Akpan

Joseph's Wars

Due to escalating violence arising after the general elections,
Joseph has fled his country, the CAR, for the third time.
Courtesy: UNHCR

Creeping

Like a thief

In the still of the night,

They sped under the starlit

Central African sky.

Sprinting not for the calling

Of the coveted Olympic prize

But for the mortal privilege

Of witnessing another, be it cold, night.

Theirs is a heart-wrenching

Suicidal, sickening story.

Once was it said

But thrice have I heard,

A young man fled home

Not for a crime of his own

Making

But for the volent awakening

That rocked a nation off her heels.

Peace spat in his face

With the sound of gunshot sprays.

'It's the third time. I am tired,'

Joseph says, and his situation is dire.

What is the measure of hate required

To turn on an encore bloodletting?

And whence is the streams of healing

For the afflicted?

My people

Are marked for death

And their chronicle

Is as fuel for the hearth.

Akpan

Diamond Against Wood

Courtesy: unhcr.org

Gather some hoes 'round here, man,

We're about to crack down on this famine.

Break up the fallow ground in Yemen

And only a fool argues with his tools,

Com'on and till the soil as we go farming.

Bring these refugees some refuge.

Let's pool our resources

Get this land flowing with milk and honey;

Break the lack, send some stack of food

Or brother, just pump the money.

This is diamond against wood,

This dilemma is getting whooped.

If we put our backs to the grind,

And keep staying on our grind,

We'll bring salvation

Back to Yemen.

And right there's our commission

Cause we y'all God's children.

Akpan

Fight Good

Courtesy:UNHCR.org

I know all the colors

The basic organic combination

That form the shades of emotion,

Evoking the tone of a raging ocean.

It's blood and silt and gore,

It's reckless hope cast

Like an anchor on a strange shore;

It's the rat race to bleed the CAR.

Yet I believe in the strength

That in man's soul is entrenched,

The ability to stand up

Once again.

The capacity to heed this call

And let compassion fall like rain

On this patched weary sod. 

Millions are deeply hurting

In the Central African Republic. 

They need a breath of life

On the ever-mounting emotional debris.

You can fight this good fight

And make your heart a home,

A shelter for these tired souls.

Let their plight move you

So that when you move,

They move.

Akpan

Calling Out To You

Courtesy: Twitter (@UN_Women)

I'm calling out to you

Deep intervolving soulful deep.

Within this misty blue,

I'm trying to make out your properties

In a sci-fi setting

That wrest itself free

Of all chemical feelings. 

I dip my fingers in the void

That used to be you, before

Haters turned on the dark,

The lurid silence is an haunted park

That hums n' strums

The jangling discord

That's the new definition of our world.

Still I'm reaching out to you

And I'll be waiting until I see a new you

Climb over the crest of the horizon. 

And fill the world with your orange sun,

Beaming from the cap of the mountaintop. 

Akpan

Covid-Related

Courtesy: UNHCR

Darkness falls across the land,

Shooting straight from the East;

From the pockets of Wuhan,

A plague spat from the belly of the beast

A chip of the Apocalypse

Surrounds you in its mist

Then punch you in the gut

With a iron fist

That throws your windpipe into lock. 🔒 

The Reaper awaits with his scythe,

His footsteps alien and lithe. 

You gotta be Spiderman

Or you's a dead man:

Wear a mask, 😷

Wash your hands,

And hog your distance.

Last year, there wasn't no Christmas 🎄

It would be a shame if Santa Claus

Was down with the Corona. 

If we all could share love

On the same level we caught the virus:

With a hug, 🤗

Thro a cough,

In a simple touch,

We'd stare wars

Down and call its bluff. 

We'll tear down walls

By a sneeze n' a stomp. 

But even tho we y'all separated

We still Covid-related. 

We can do this

Heart to heart ❤️we'll knock this.

Roll out the vaccines for everybody,

People of all nationalities

Let's include the refugees,

Together, we'll erase this disease. 

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