Lovin' Can't Wait

1 in 8 Yemenis is displaced.
1 in 5 Yemenis children is malnourished.
Your support and little donation will help change
their story.
Click: UNHCR

Love won't let us wait

Love full of prospect and gay

Love that turns

The blinded eye

Away from the big lie

To affirm the conundrum

Pasted to the sky.

Love that forgives all

Love that marches onward

Until its work is done

Love that bulldozed a way

Thru the waste place

To hand the desolate

A soul-lifting ray,

Love won't let us wait.

Love will lift the weight

Off the shoulders

Of every one of 'em displaced,

Love will fight hunger,

Love will comfort the dying,

Love will defend the weak.

Love won't let us wait.

Love will make haste

And will not delay.

Love will fill the basket

Within the poverty bracket,

To ridicule the casket,

Broker peace, silence the racket.

Love delivers on a promise

When there's nothing left to give,

Love will make it make sense

In the midst of violence.

Love will speak out

In the streets,

Pump the volume out loud

For men turned victims.

And love

This time love,

Knows that Yemen can't wait,

Love won't let us wait.

Akpan

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

Ain't No Christmas For A Refugee

Courtesy: UNHCR

Ain't no Christmas for a refugee,

People would sooner pee on his effigy;

Ain't no chicken in any pot,

Ain't no sunshine in his dawn.

Ain't no Christmas for a refugee,

He'll always be the same OG

Who menfolk regard as an apology,

And the womenfolk await her elegy.

Ain't no Christmas for a refugee,

Ain't no record of their pedigree.

Ain't nobody gifts 'em nationality,

But they y'all denied their humanity.

Ain't no Christmas for a refugee;

Ain't nobody prepare 'em confetti,

Not even a slice of roasted turkey

Or leftover peanut butter sandwich.

But a refugee need

A certain measure of heat,

Something to keep 'em warm at nights;

Cause refugee rights are human rights.

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

You Count

Happy Birthday to the world's greatest
refugee organisation. 
UNHCR70

Three score years straddling a decade

You've been in the business of making lemonade

From streams of tears of people on the downgrade;

Scathed twigs snatched from fires of war,

Minors plucked from the cliff of a crisis,

Outcasts fleeing the bias of discrimination.

For those holed up in waste lands, you build an oasis

And thrust into their hearts the gift of hope.

You've given countless beasts of no nation

An abiding identity and a home.

And several persons with no birth records

Are no longer mere faces in the crowd

Cause you make certain every strike counts.

The world's witnessing rising hostilities,

Over 80 million refugees and counting...

Yet you've stayed an anchor in troubled seas

A sturdy branch reaching out to a drowning man.

Wherever darkness covers the land,

You have held out a ray.

You've often believed, ” Everybody Counts.”

Now on your very own special day

Everybody declares, above all, that” You Count.”

Akpan

Pale Irretrievables

Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his
nearly 2-year-old daughter, Valeria who drowned trying to cross
the Rio Grande river in Mexico to Brownsville, Texas, USA.
Courtesy: The Washington Post

Could you please hold that line?

Before you rock your shine

Come let me take you right

Down to a friend of mine

She’s down by the Rio Grande

Tucked in the death damp

T-shirt of the young man

This tragic beauty once called ‘Dad’

Dead

Did I tell you she died?

The river took her head

And banged it against its spine

Again! Again! Again!

Again! Again! Again!

             Again!

Until locked in that final embrace…

Even so she held her grace

Maybe she yelled his name

As the current slapped her face

And choked her

Until all she did was whisper

Down by the Rio Grande

Lay Valeria

Marooned on the banks among the reeds

Tucked into the t-shirt of a man

Named after the famed award for movies

Down by the Rio Grande

Is a picture less than grand.

Akpan

We Can't Go Home Anymore

IDP Girl in Nigeria
Photo Courtesy: blogs.cfr.org

We can’t go home anymore.

We docked our ship on a strange shore,

And turned our backs on first love.

We tossed it all for the bombs

And wandered far from native soil,

But home is all we long for.

We buried our hearts in mass graves;

We left ‘em there for keepsakes.

Home aint what it used to be,

So we seek what the lost seek

When home is no longer home.

We’ll return someday we hope

Yet now we can only wait

Cause home has been laid to waste.

Even though we yearn for it,

We will not set foot within,

And tho weeds outgrow our crops—

What good’s food to a cooked goose?

And if beasts occupy our courts,

And rats feast on our thatched roofs,

We’ll survive; life does go on.

We can’t go home anymore.

Akpan

Never Break

Syrian Refugee Woman and Child
Courtesy: UNHCR

We will never break.

We won’t bow to fear.

We will face the rain.

We won’t spare a tear

We will raise our song;

We will dare the storm.

We will break a wall,

We will rule the world.

Can you hear us now?

Can you hear our shout?

Can you drown a crowd?

Can you hear us now?

We will never break.

We was born to reign.

We got what it takes,

We control this space.

You can bring the pain,

We will weave it to gain.

We will rock this punt,

We will shock the world.

Can you hear us now?

Can you hear our shout?

Can you drown a crowd?

Can you hear us now?

Can you hear us now?

Can you hear us now?

We will never break

We’ll dance till earth quakes.

Akpan

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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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