Day 25: Signs of Majesty

Photo: eLKayPics via Flickr

I wait not for what man can give,

I never spared a care anyway.

Cause what a man can give,

A man can take away.

And I will not be relieved

Of the gift I received.

On my two firm feet

I will stand above the elements of defeat.

And conquer a cavalry of conceit.

But in the meanwhile, I will not be subjected by limits.

And until my glory is complete,

My valiant struggles will be replete,

And my prophecies ain’t gon’ deplete.

Thus, I thrive like a seed

Planted by the seven streams.

My tide will neither ebb nor recede.

Instead I will multiply like reed

Beside the Nile till all eyes crave to read

The memories of the myself of me,

And righteously covet my dream.

Cause I intend to exceed

Every single expectation, indefinitely reseed

And ravel out a mystery that’s been prevailing

Before the foundation of the world came to be.

Akpan

Day 20: Manual Disconnect

Photo: stuficionado.net

Straight out o’ the shadows of my past

I emerge like a torn off branch flung up by a blast,

And I invade the world’s stage like a seasoned cast,

As I rewrite my history, skillfully.

Touched not by the scars of slavery

But by the elements of mastery.

I have been forged by a unique pedigree

One whose entire bloodline has been kings.

I present my case

As one of a profoundly celebrated race;

And in this place of shame and disgrace

I have attained a special state of genuine grace.

A beautiful, reputable brew of Negro

Molded by circumstances I survived into human ammo.

Cause I heeded the voice calling beyond the heat of the inferno.

The days of my life are like a totem pole:

Every exhale represents something; I’m game.

I’m about erasing the account of shame,

And purging the stigma set on a name.

I am yesterday that will not vanish from memory;

I am today that persists indefinitely;

I am tomorrow, I am symbol of immortality.

The darkest phase of an eclipse,

I have ascended within a prophecy

To manifest as an article of potency.

And like an authentic, personified apocalypse,

I annihilate the blinded course of hypocrisy.

I have come to accept the reality of who I am;

A concrete representation of the Son of Man.

I multiply in billions like dust in the harmattan.

I pulled the plug on anything that stands against my identity,

And charged my faculty to disconnect from falsity.

Akpan

The World Owes You Nothing

Courtesy: Naja Niketa

Every single day I remind myself that the world owes me nothing. I whack myself upside the head with the essence of that affirmation daily. No man is indebted to me and I think the feeling is genuinely reciprocated. When I run into a fix, I like calling this fact to mind. And I think the guy on the inside is gradually, coming to grasps with this reality.

Life is an adventure, which if mastered, could develop into art. I strive for clarity in the pursuit of my goals and battle to remain persuaded that what I know about myself would still be true whether I believe it or not. I long to separate myself from the beguiling influence of come-easy ideas and hurtle into the willful abandon of creative aloneness.

Still I recognize the fact (I must, you see) that I cannot survive without the rest of humanity.

            I am indebted to society to exploit the depths of my individuality; to reach for the utmost I could achieve and to bring that into the development of man. I must come to terms with the reality that to a certain measure, I share similar qualities with the rest of the human family.

I see a need to repaint the big picture. I perceive a call to define my destination and attain a level of awareness of the inner individual. Life can be a work of art, I tell myself. And the more I see the frame of the picture, the more I acquaint myself with the truth that stares me in the face. I see how I fit into the scheme of things and I’m able to separate wit from ability; to understand the debt I owe myself and the blame that is not the world’s.

The faith I possess in my abilities turns my eyes on responsibilities. I can’t refuse my obligations because I recognize I can only thrive and expect the full thrust of fulfillment to do its work when I admit I have nothing to prove to anybody.

Keep your pens bleeding!

Akpan

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It's Electric. Boogie. Wooogie

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

Maya Angelou.

If we wanted to take some time to study the phenomenon of the electric current before we fed our household gadgets with its magical juices, we just might never get around to using it.

For some of us based in Lagos, Nigeria or any parts of planet earth, where power supply brings you the worst kind of drama-where power's on the other side of erratic, any research in that quarter is absolutely forbidden. Take as example, a fellow trapped in a relative environment takes his chances, he tries to understand the flow of current, the technicality behind the stuff. He works himself to a rust researching and researching.

The odds are 99 to 1.

Several years after our guy is six feet under, he'll still be wishing the lights had stayed on 'just a few moments longer'.

'Just a little longer'. Could regret evoke a richer melancholy streak? I doubt it.

We don't have to go through this guy's traumas to unravel the mystery called talent. We are sure to come off exhausted and burned out. And, we still wouldn't experience the thrills of creativity. It's the worst kind of defeat. Inspiration is an unstable quantity-unpredictable but it is not changeable. It only stays this long and then it fizzles away.

Understanding your talent is grabbing at it every chance you get.

We all got potential. A measure of ability. A capacity to be inventive and so little time to ravel the functionalities. Experience teaches. It’s all in the long haul. A way to be on first name basis with our creativeness is to be constantly creative; we have to keep having a go at it. And soon enough we would have a feel of our habitat.

The zone is where we go to understand the muse. To enter the zone, we strip ourselves of mutual tensions and accept our gifts for what they are: gifts. You know how sickening it feels to have somebody scrutinize your present to them. Guess what? You are doing it to yourself.

The everyday little activities we perform, when we bring our heart to it and make out time to be creative in that, reveals a little bit of our talent. It is the mystery we are within.

The core of the individual’s characteristics is revealed in his talent(s).

Talent trapped exclusively in pods of spectacular art is not pure talent and consequently, unbeneficial to the talented.

Our lives, the daily chores that define us are often the channels for personal and artistic eruptions.

Bleed your soul’s juice. Charge up a world gone to hell in a hand basket.

Akpan

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