Yet, More Than a Brother Emeka Akpe

Apparitions of buried memories exhumed with rash eulogies Arouse dried up tears that ever fail to cleanse the robe of guilt Arraigning again before the partial jury of tormenting thoughts Kaleidoscopic filial relationships hypnotize the mind to dumbness Kamikaze images on ethereal screen longingly beckoning for a role Kedging the ship of life’s voyage with sorrowful tugs to damnation Intentions misjudged rivet spiteful labels reflected by wicked eyes Impaling arrows of hate perforate the spirit to seep out its essence Invitation to invasion by dark fiends to fetter the mind’s fragile walls Neglected on shore as brothers and sisters sail out with patron’s hearse Neighbors cut out their flesh of revenge measuring with unjust scales Neutral judges acquiesce with stolid silence as the gavel of authority Black skin refuses to be cajoled by those richly perfumed emollients Bronzing came by nature’s quirk and glistening the sweat of its kiln Brawn cultivated in the gymnasium of hard labor threads the body Anodynes are moments of laughter with friends that rob sorrow of joy Allayed fears sucked into the chasm of oblivion by a vortex of pleasure Annoyance a rare display on a platform erected on the base of candor Mistakes of the past hurled as fiery pebbles of insult across continents Mark with contorting bruises turning the face into an offensive mask Maturity date for restoration of loaned out bond suspended on a caveat Intermittent pulses race to recesses of cranial bank to withdraw memories Intractable dramas staged to the roars of disgust banished with entreaties Internalized are kernels of the fruit of life eaten hurriedly in ignorance Emeka Akpe