Day 26: Champ

President Buhari (Nigeria) with the 21 released Chibok girls
Photo Courtesy: Sahara Reporters

Shudda killed me when you had your chance.

Now I’m the champion of my circumstance.

The horrors I pulled thro made me stronger.

Who’s talking surviving when I’m thriving?

Head held up high I’m goal minding;

I have been scorched but it refined me,

I’ve been pressed down but it bought me victory,

I got the rage of a mother bear,

And for me impossible is a dare.

Shudda taken that shot but no mo,

The dragon unleashed let passion flow.

My vision’s clearer, art of war mastered,

You made my skin thicker than leather.

My heart’s learned to battle the weather.

I waded in the flood, walked thro the fire,

I shudda died when you had your chance.

I’m a tougher girl forged by my desire,

Guess I got potential that works only in champs.

Akpan

Day 15: April 15

A mother reconciles with one of the 21 Chibok girls recently released
by Boko Haram. This poem is written in her POV.
Photo Courtesy: premiumtimesng.com

She touched me.

And brought me sweet release.

And o, the visions that lit my mind

Would make blind men despise sight.

She stepped out of bondage

On a will that matched the mileage,

She touched me and every cold feeling

Thawed like wax and I find I can still believe.

She touched me.

And those pained years are but one minute.

And my fears bled then ran along like a river;

My joys will overflow the banks of the Niger.

She’s made of steel,

A heart that’s dying to live;

All her parts bind because she believed—

That’s what I felt when she touched me.

She touched me.

And brought me sweet release.

And o, the visions that lit my mind

Would make blind men despise sight.

Akpan

The Assassination of X

Sometime in January, Boko Haram terrorists razed a town in
North East, Nigeria killing a 'woman in labor.' In the words of a
witness, “Half of the baby boy (was) out and she died like this.”
This poem is for the unnamed boy who I called 'X.'

And who hears when we call and comes running?

Who waits up for us and keeps the lamp burning

To show the path home when twilight is dawning?

Who reaches out when we face a chasm yawning?

And swoops us up just before we keel over falling

To our deaths in a fissure that is always gnawing?

The value of x is, for all practical purposes, unresolved;

He’ll for all time be a mystery because he died unnamed,

His spot is uninhabited for he never set foot on this sod.

The death of x is, beyond all reasonable doubt, a shame;

Not he or his Mama deserved that baptism in cold blood,

No one will ever know what x was cut out for or his gain.

The tale of x is, contrary to common belief, an ill weapon

To bludgeon the foe cause he died before he came thence,

We can turn pain to gain and make them pay for our loss.

The value of our x they must be made to feel, is priceless.

Akpan

Dragons of Home

This war on terror is a lot more about the victims-the dead, the displaced,
the missing-than the psychos wreaking havoc. We shouldn't lose sight of
the big picture and end up defeated.
On the side, what do you think they did to this poor girl to make her strap
explosives around her waist? This is our future going up in smoke.

You’re not here n’ how the clause spawns an electric

Arc that saturates this terrain in a wakeless gray rage

I can still hear your voices carried on the night wind,

Deep down the cove where I tuck my private self away,

Full and inextinguishable as it rides down the throes

Of cruel death and irreversible moldering of the bones;

You come to me in my quietude and unknot the knots

And as the puzzle sorts itself out a shape starts to form;

A friend’s face bending in and out of form taunting me

Begging not to be an option but a number one priority

You’re not here and I’m not there and the difference is

All the world but I won’t turn the page and close my eyes

To the heat, it’s the thorn in my flesh that only I must pick

If I must find peace. It’s all about you, it’s hi time I realize

This war aint about Shekau but you free to breathe, to be,

To dig into all of life’s peculiarities as experience hands it

Down the tube. You deserve the attention and compassion

Showered on you and the memories of you will still live on,

That is one fine article of this assurance I will never break

Until triumph busts open the gates bearing you in its wake.

Akpan

Tightrope

For the Chibok Girls

Here I sit in my room alone but alone,

Tossed in mixed-up emotion’s throes,

Dying to live where your pain lives;

Breathless in anticipation of the impact

I want to hurt your hurt bring you release,

Trap the sunshine in a cup revamp your spark.

Tho I can’t read the scars on the skin of your heart

I’ll give anything for five minutes to play your part.

I wish I could trade an exhale for a million sighs;

Heave the tug of your burden shoulder high

Until I hear myself scream, ‘please, no more!’

Yet this much is true, no one can erase your worth.

Akpan