Eneh Akpan Writes: death

Showing posts with label death. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

The Gift Remains

I can see tomorrow

My eyes are drills that burrow

Deep to where days lay fallow

The research is thorough

And yet tomorrow never comes

I’m a man broken by sorrow

I’d lease it but none would borrow

I see war I see painted floods

I hear the sounds of rejoicing

I see shod feet running to war

I hear the flimsy choices

That perish thoughts of

Everlasting reunion

I see visions

Of fatal retribution

Like the coming of locusts

I reach out

With trembling hands

And get knocked down

Into sinking sand

I leap into the flames

Of the ravaged land

The gift remains

Akpan

Monday, July 8, 2019

Funeral Ceremony Of Innocence

Let’s talk about death

Let’s talk about decay

Let’s talk about rot n’

Corpses that kiss the earth

When soil drinks the blood

Of those who lost the bet

And caress their skewered gut

Let’s talk about an orphan’s curse

And the riddle of spilled blood

Let’s open forbidden books

Let’s talk history

Let’s dig up our roots

Research our chemistry

Let’s talk morality

And the simple creed of human feels

Let’s talk about hate

And how the over-spill degenerates

Let’s talk about conflicts

That throw relations in a fix

Lets’ talk about wars

And the cost of wars

Let’s talk about the waste

In the wake

Of tragedies

That’s catching like allergies

Let’s talk about the funeral ceremony

Of innocence and the attendees

Let’s talk about child abuse

About human rights abuse

And the organizations that put it to use

Let’s talk about tyrants

Who constitute a nuisance

Let’s talk about agitators

And after all has been said and done

Let’s talk about death some more

Akpan

Don't Talk About Death

Don’t talk about death

I’m kinda missing life as is

I wish I could be there

I got too much life to live

The theme of the news is death

Facebook posts publish death

YouTube videos produce death

Twitter hashtags…

Git me the hell outta here

Don’t talk about death

I paid my debt

So I just wanna collect

Death is the new pet

In Libya, Syria, Sudan

The whole earth is a battlefield

Blood-bleached sands bleed magenta

Sanity is thinning shield

Don’t talk about death

The auricle is lead.

Akpan

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Abel's Blood

That foetus ain't a blob in humanity,

She's the entire humanity in a blob.

And now she's been made a casualty

To the last of the innocent drop.

So we offer up as our offering

A stolen goblet of virgin blood,

We do not live but exist solely

If all we really do is yield up

The mantle of control to war dogs.

It's us who live by our hearts feeling

The pangs of misery who keep bleeding;

Abel's blood still appeals for justice

Wherever innocence is victimized,

And so we bear the mark of Cain

Unless we make that sacrifice

And break off the fingers of blame.

There is no redemption otherwise.

Akpan

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

I will take you down to where I live
All the way up to the nth degree
I will show you fear in the crannies
The tears on the pillow shed nightly.
I'll give you a blow-by-blow account
Of the kiss-kiss bang-bang downtown.
I will share the dreams I often dream
The waking dreams that's my reality.
I'll take your hope and break it slowly
Like Passover bread we'll eat and weep,
Show you hate in the eyes of a teen
I raise the skirts of a child n' you see
The bombs strapped to her waist set to kill
God's enemies who resist his will.
I will love to show you where I live
You'll want to bleed when you see me bleed.

Akpan

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The Genetic Clause - Fiction

I saw the body spread on that dank stone

And knew those things which feasted were not men;

I knew this strange, grey world was not my own,

But Yuggoth, past the starry voids - and then

The body shrieked at me with a dead cry,

And all too late I knew that it was I!

— H. P. Lovecraft,

Fungi from Yuggoth

“Tell you what, I heard one hell of a story from this chap over at the crematory that I suppose I should mention,” Diment was saying. “Wouldn’t know if you have the tummy for it. It knocked the wind out my sails like a one-two punch to my midsection.”

We were at the Harkerville Beach Resort watching the waves bash into the beach and lap up its sand. It’s 2045. February, 2045, if memory serves.

“Crenshaw was just twenty three when he killed himself over a bad case of the flu.”

The flu. Folks always call it the flu these days. Just the flu. “You should have heard it when Matthew Graves, that’s the gentleman at the undertaker’s, told his story. Crazy, han?”

☤ ☤ ☤ ☤ ☤ ☤

This story has been accepted for publication in an online magazine. I'm sorry I have to take it off my blog. I think it's unfair to the subscribers at Separate Worlds Magazine. But, you can head on over there and subscribe for the December, 2011 Edition and enjoy lots of speculative fiction pieces.

Thanks.

ENEH AKPAN

Ikeja, Lagos.