Mo' Than You'll Ever Know

For Refugee Olympic Team participating at
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic games.
Photo Courtesy: UNHCR

Mo' than you'll ever know

I'm rooting for you

Bring back the gold

And paint the skies blue

I hope your dreams come true

You deserve that gold

More than Simone Biles

Twisting her neck-wringing style

So I'm rooting for you

Cause refugees can too

Shout out to Mosamah cycling

Her way all thru to the olympics

I'm cheering for amazing athletes

Like Kimia, Dina and Abdullah

Mo' than Sha' Carri Richardson

When she pumping like a train coming

Down the track

I'm rooting for Anas Al Khalifa

For Cyrille, the weightlifter.

That's why I'm making it plain

Like a shot of pain

To the back of the brain

Rain down on Tokyo

Like Nyiragongo Volcano.

I'm rooting for you

Mo' than you'll ever know

I'm sold out to you

And that's all you need to know.

Akpan

Refugees Make The world Go Round

Today's World Refugee Day
Image Courtesy: UNHCR

Refugees make the world go round

Same world tried to run 'em aground,

So we celebrate World Refugee Day

Cause everyday is a murder day

Not cause everyday's a holiday,

Ethnic cleansing is kids at play

And cruel wars have come to stay,

But we'd celebrate for no reason

And joy would be vague n' a treason,

If we wasn't celebrating people

Fleeing home

Where violence became a staple,

People who reached out to hope

When hope dug a hole

In their soul

And shooed 'em out in the cold.

And now they're raising a torch

In the thick of our darkness,

To guide the world

With the light of their brightness

Cause only together with refugees

Can we really heal

The horror that slithers in the still

Of the night when dreams are starlit,

Only together can we learn

To mend the broken cistern

And combine a beam of 10,000 lights

To ignite each other to shine

In a world where refugees

Compete in the Olympics

Like the swimmer called Yusra,

Are helping to fight the pandemic,

Fighting for youth rights like Aya,

And Ramatulahi who's a lawyer,

Making aviation history like Ghazal

And there's a lady who's a doll maker,

The Olympian who's a mental health worker,

And of course, the professional footballer.

Refugees are writing their names in gold

On the cosmic walls of this globe.

Akpan

Refugees Are People

The official 29 members of
The IOC Refugee Olympic Team
participating in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
Courtesy: The UNHCR YouTube channel

Refugees are people.

Feed that to your mental input device,

Refugees are people,

Not some three blind mice

Kids poke to see how they run,

Real people scorched by fires of war

Whose hearts assumed a charred tone.

Just so you know,

Refugees are no invertebrate-

Queered mammals with no backbones,

Let that thought percolate

And there'll be no bones

About acknowledging a humanity

Beamed by a deep and inventive personality,

Although, we're called 'refugees,'

We're a people pumping redemptive energies

We strive to extort our past

By making sacrifices that last.

We're going the whole nine yards

And this ain't no thin gruel,

We're pleased to present a world class

World record breaking crew,

Drumrolls please...

The IOC Refugee Olympic Team.

That's proof there's more to “Refugee"

Than the downtalk that meets your ear,

“This is going down in history,

And our names will be there.”

Akpan

I Swim For Every Refugee

Yusra Mardini
Swimmer for The Refugee Olympic Team
In the Tokyo Olympics

When I swim

It's not just to flex my fin,

I'm holding it down for my Gs

I swim for every refugee.

When I plunge into a pool

My body becomes a tool

My mission's written on water

I'm writing a soul letter

Telling the world,

Here's a branch snatched from war

Still as good

As the best in the hood.

My skill ain't crude

Goes for the rest of my crew,

I am a refugee

Stroking a legacy

On the surface of a watery grid

Sowing seeds

So refugees may believe

And the world may agree,

If one refugee can swim

Then all refugees can achieve.

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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