IT'S THE 25TH.

 

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I love the smell of Christmas and

Winter was a perfect time to give love.

From our abundance

Let's join God to make a toast today.

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1.

I've been listening to Carols and church bells

The preacher talked about what happened the night before Christmas

He said love was born 

And three men followed the star to offer Gold Myrrh and Frankincense.

I've been reading a Bible story 

About the immaculate conception

And the birth of God the son.

2.

Winter was a perfect time to give love.

When the weather was cold like the heart of man

And the night dark like the sins on the soil

Heaven sent a shepherd King to a manger.

Winter was a perfect time to give love.

When his children had wandered off the path he choosed 

And lies became a cloud of darkness over his creations

He sent the way, truth and life.

Winter was a perfect time to give love.

When the blizzard of nemesis ravaged mankind

And was shredding it's essence in an icy storm

The creator of nature sent the one who could calm storms.

Winter was a perfect time to give love.

3.

I love the smell of Christmas

The spicy aroma that spreads across the table

And the thrilling scents of celebration

Every moment of this day, stays a memory until forever.

I love the sound of Christmas

The melodies from the carols and bangs of fire works.

The chattering and laughter of a people sharing meals, wine and love. 

Every moment of this day, stays a memory until forever.

4.

While we eat and drink from our abundance

And dance to best music 

Let's remember the lone child on the street

And spare a meal or more.

Celebrate love by spreading love.

While we decorate our Christmas trees and homes

With lights and gifts for the season

Let's remember our penniless neighbors

And spare a light bulb or a gift pack.

Sharing the glow and wealth won't make you dim and poor.

Celebrate love by spreading love.

5.

Join God to make a toast today 

In memory of the beginning

Of a new covenant with mankind.

Join the Angels and your church choir

To sing carols and hymns for him

The one called Messiah is born.

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I love the smell of Christmas and

Winter was a perfect time to give love.

From our abundance

Let's join God to make a toast today.

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© Ifiokobong Etuk (KING of the QUILL)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to our readers and contributors. 

What's your favorite line(s) ?

PLACES I'VE SEEN CUPID'S ARROW

 

I've seen Cupid's arrow

Pierce through a mother's heart

As with tender eyes and time

She watches her baby

Grow from the cradle to maturity.

I've seen Cupid's arrow

Stuck on a fathers biceps

As with wise words and swords

He fights for and prepares sons and daughters

For the journey through life.

I've seen Cupid's arrow

Mounted on the warriors banner

As with a lion like bravery and bullets

He heads for the trenches

To win or die for his country.

I've seen Cupid's arrow

Sailing wildly through space

Like the sensation created by young lovers

When they say sweet words to each other

And seal them with kisses.

I've seen Cupid's arrow

Bounded in the letters from my Heartcode

When in the middle of the night

She punches her keypads just to say

"I love you whichever way"

© Ifiokobong Etuk (KING of the QUILL)

MY CONTEMPLATIONS ON GOD AND MAN

1. 

THE DIVINE 

You see heaven gave us everything

And when it came to knowledge of itself,

It cursed us with a certain kind of ignorance

So blame not myself for my mortal contemplations.

My head has me thinking God is selfish

A narcissistic being so deeply involved with power and control

So much that he decides to share his glory with no one 

Yet in the end, our selfish God thought it kind enough

To leave the earth entirely for his creations. Is that not generous?

Golgotha still has a question mark hanging out on the old rugged cross.

I see two parties justifying their actions and calling each other bad.

To the jews, a man had been blasphemous and was meant to die

How well did man play God?

Yet to God, his son was sent to save mankind and pay the price by dying

How well did God play man?

We were told God allowed it happened. A simple case of "...God killed God"

And till now, the Trinity is yet to provide a name for the Golgotha story.

Murder or suicide?

Then man, in his constant cravings for everything good, played a role and called it salvation.

Speaking of which.

I was told never to question mysteries

So because of this, the Trinity basks in the euphoria of my ignorance

But since science has failed to explain this theory

And my humanity decides to be omni-inquisitive.

I think I'll need a piece of paradise to understand how three person made one

So in all my wishings, I crave for the Pentecost flame to rest on my temple

Maybe that way, I'll see things in a new light.

I have decided not to contemplate on miracles without understanding God first

What's understanding what God did without understanding God?

So until I understand who did what,

Let's just pretend to believe Water to wine, five loaves of bread and two fishes were all possible.

I contemplate because I seek to know

And,

In all my wishings, I crave for the Pentecost flame to rest on my temple

Maybe that way, I'll see things in a new light.

2.

WHO MAN'S? (HUMANS)

Since dogma forbids me from questioning the creator

I think I'll put my question marks on the creation

Maybe that way, I'll be free from the bliss my ignorance offers.

My fear is not in asking or getting answers either

Because I know people try to answer when asked

Yet they don't guarantee you'll like the answers.

Any difference from dogma?

Man answers from what he knows

And what he doesn't, he finds a way to get lost

Unlike dogma that knows all but answers some

Man doesn't know all, yet he answers all

Man claims to know all from the confidence of knowing little

Yet because he can't do without bliss

Ignorance sits on the crown of his finite knowledge.

In knowing,

I don't think man knows a thing.

We might be peacocking in science but we know nothing.

Yes! The plenary of people know absolutely nothing

How can you say you know of all and nothing of your beginning at all?

Genesis or Big bang? How unsure are we again as a race?

For peace, let's leave the beginning for the past

And talk about a common battle we fight differently

Evil. 

Genderless evil in every sense of it.

How does man see it?

Is it only evil to man because it wasn't done by him?

Or because it is what it is?

How does man know evil?

Oops! I forgot he knows nothing.

For the records

Man might end up being the only mystery that fails to understand himself.

What should I expect from something created out of the image of a mystery?

You tell me.

3.

CREDITS AND BLAMES

When we pray for rain, we also ask for flood

We give God the credit for the first

And say it's good

We gnash our teeth and curse the later

And say it's evil from the devil.

When we pray for long life, 

We are only asking for a delayed death

And if God grants one, he grants both.

So why do we say death is not of God?

We pray for sunshine, and heat is part of it

We thank the first for drying our clothes

And curse the later for making the earth burn our soles.

Such pettiness!

Why can't we be thankful for 

Rainfall and flood

Long life and death

Sunshine and scorched Earth

All at once?

If one being created nature

The credits and blames should be to him.

Should it not be so?

4

ON HOW MEN SEE GOD

Ask man to define God

And watch him talk and brag

About a flawless version of his being.

I think man's perception of God is rather narrow

What if there's more to God than the flawlessness?

What if perfection is not the only thing that defines God?

There most be more to the being of God

Than what perception man draws from his imaginations

There's no way the beauty of heaven will be just golden gates.

I don't fear God for the sake of it

God in his mysteries have taken the status of the unknown

And in all I've learnt

I've learnt to fear the unknown for it's unnumbered possibilities.

#my_contemplations_on_God_and_man

- Ifiokobong Etuk

(KING of the QUILL)

Which line(s) could you relate with?

5.

THANKSGIVING

We call God times more than we can count

For problems. For help. Whenever we can't get our hands around things

So basically, we're cry babies that can't move a finger without calling the father.

Oh! I almost forgot, we call to criticize him too

And we call to tell him he doesn't even exist.

Puny beings!

I think religion made it that way

"Call God whenever you need help and he'll be there"

It's written in the book of every religious basics

And paraphrased to attain some level of the same difference.

Then one part comes a little bit too late.

Thanksgiving!

How often do we call God to show some gratitude?

Spare me the trash of self-righteousness 

And tell me the last time you did some appreciation.

For the last gram of oxygen you swallowed

For the last second you just spent

For the last time the miracle of waking up happened

When was it?

Are you ever thankful?

Am I?

Are we?

?

#my_contemplations_on_God_and_man

- Ifiokobong Etuk

(KING of the QUILL)

Which line(s) could you relate with?

I BLESS THE DAY I FOUND YOU

I think the Telenovelas are good liars because our love story never started like any scenes they created. Or maybe they tell a little truth, because from what I see, we might be heading to happily ever after

Or are we just on a vacation to wonderland?

Whatever it is, I decided to hold on to every good thing the day I met you. I had stopped fighting for certain things; Fame. Happiness. Peace. Love. Because I believed every good thing would come. Just come! Just! And just like every good thing, you came.

Forgive me for being goofy but I think I can't remember what day it was. What I was doing. What the weather looked like or even what I wore. Everything has been dissolved in the waters of time except for how I felt. 

In the midst of my forgetfulness, I still cherish what I can't remember and leave what I can't hold in my head for my heart. Every day births new reasons to believe blessings still come and although I can't remember, I bless the day I found you.

Like the coming and going of sea waves,

Time and events have come and gone

Yet I still thank heaven for making the day we met.

- Ifiokobong Etuk

(KING of the QUILL)

"SIMPLE LUNACY"

The only man that knows the taste of poison lives in a cemetery and is sleeping under his own tombstone but unlike poison, same cannot be said about lunacy.

Don't be fooled, the world we live in follows the pattern of a certain form of lunacy that has been accepted and shared globally. It has been so widespread and humans have come to give this new cohabitation a name. The call it "the norm".

In the midst of this acceptable lunacy called norm, is always a rare occurrence of lunacy that gets incubated in the heart and ends up corrupting the mind with wild imaginations of soft kisses on heads on soft pillows owned by bodies under soft duvets.

The lunacy I talk about is always below ground level so your first verb to it will always be a fall.

Your first sense of this lunacy was sight. The day you saw doom in a manner that made you think we all lied about the devil. His dreamy eyes had blue tint and his hair was a thousand times better than the best quality of wool you could ever Imagine. His body was like that of the Hercules you read about in your classes of Greek mythology. Tall, fair and all shades of handsome in complexion and when he added a smile to the picture, damm! You had found the perfect prince charming for your lunatic story and if anyone told you he was Lucifer, you were willing to walk through hell with this creature.

The second sense of the lunacy was sound. You know the ears have great powers when it comes to the creation and paranoia and this is exactly what his "hey girl" did to you. In the eternity of a split second, you could testify even before God that you had heard the voice of one of his angels. 

Sad to say but your sixth sense came third in all this. She just like you was lost in the story you were writing in your head. You made your nights sleepless because your bed and pillows couldn't offer the comfort your imaginations did. You allowed him become a regular character in the screenplay of your dreams in the little pockets of time you couldn't cheat sleep. Slowly he was winning you over and by the time he had your sixth sense fully, all that was left out just needed a little calling to win over.

You lost your senses of smell, taste and touch under one moon visit. 

"A hand to hold 

A heart to love

A lip to kiss

A heaven to feel"

You only leaned in closer to smell what heaven felt like when it happened. You were still lost in the floral explosions your nose was getting from the gardens of Babylon when the taste came. You weren't ready for it but what's the point of declining something that tasted good when your tongue was telling you clearly that it wanted this and nothing else. Heaven sure tasted and smelt good, for once, you knew there was more to the lips and tongue than covering the mouth and saying words.

You couldn't think of the sweet things you had tasted before like chocolate, strawberry, cakes, sugar, honey, milk, and vanilla because none of them was a match for Lucifer's tongue and that's how you knew why lies were sweet and the truth was bitter. 

To crown it all, you needed to open the doors for him to find a way inside you and that was how the last sense came about. Touch. He touched you so well. First with his tongue and then with his third leg. You welcomed him into you with closed eyes, soft moan and a tight grip of the duvet and in he was to do wonders in your wetness and succulence.

Once in, he kept running in and out in a progressive rhythm. He did it so well that you didn't need words to tell you he had a mastery of what he was doing. You weren't ignorant either, you responded to every thrust with the right moaning note to match and for a good ride, you knew when to tighten and loosen the carriage way. Slowly and quiet gasping, then a little bit faster and a peaceful call for "harder", then a fast pace with closed eyes and a more soulful moan, then the fastest came last with you screaming in the euphoria of lunacy until you became a storm with gargantuan waves of orgasm slamming the doors of your womanhood and making it's walls quiver. This was heaven. You couldn't think otherwise as he gushed his liquid seedlings inside you. That night was weather for two.

To think that this lunacy you were living was forbidden was impossible. How could something so sweet be given such a bad tag? Truly you were convinced that when it came to this, ignorance was not bliss but missing out.

Then a time came when he played the endgame. Lucifer he was and Lucifer shall he remain. You only knew of the few beauty of hell and by the time you knew of the countless horror it held, your soul was lost already.

In the end of the story, you get to wail from a never ending pain and when asked about what love intertwined in lust meant, you only spit at your disgusting past and say it's simple lunacy. Such understatement!

© Ifiokobong Etuk

( KING of the QUILL )

Picture credit shutterstock.com

FOR MICHAEL JACKSON

Before I started loving boobs and pretty women,

A good number of my childhood fantasies revolved around the wonderful and creatively carved masterpieces of entertainment Michael Jackson was putting out right before me on the TV and radio sets.

MJ was one person I loved for many reasons. His voice, his dance moves and the huge achievements he was getting for his name in the course of his career.

There was never a time in my childhood I dared to skip a track from him no matter where I was rushing to. To every extent, I was and I'm still a fan of the King of Pop because his name alone used to be and is still a whole different form of entertainment.

I remember four year old me waking up and crying all night and pestering my parents to get me the type of shoe he wore to shoot his Billie Jean video. I mean that was how far the concept of him having every tile he stepped on illuminate. I wanted it so badly that my childhood reasoning didn't for once think it wasn't the shoe but the video production and I didn't stop until I got whipped.

Whenever I had control of the home entertainment set, I was either  watching cartoons or playing MJ and trying to mirror his moves and singing along at the same time and no matter how sad I was, the moment I heard or saw something from him be it a track, a snippet, a newspaper cutting, a video clip, an instrumental, just whatever, I was bound to get happy again.

I would talk MJ all the time, do my poor moonwalk and even try to act out the scenes from videos with my senior sister and yes, I  was gradually becoming a freak.

Actually, I was enjoying the MJ freak I was becoming until my dad took the African parenting step by cutting me off. Sad to tell, but a time came when I was banned from seeing MJ on TV and the only chance I had to hear from him was when his song was played on the radio. I had to watch with enough pain any heartbreak could cause as all his tapes and video CD we had of him sat comfortably in a carton on my dad's wardrobe and I didn't even have the power to touch them.

2008 and early 2009, the media was getting choked with news about my beloved MJ. This time, he wasn't having a mass airing of his song like he had for "Black and White" in 1995, he wasn't bombarding the world with another album, he wasn't winning eight Grammys in one night like he did in 1985, he wasn't having to appear in court for one of his numerous celebrity controversies, he wasn't doing the moonwalk at the Motown 25th anniversary performance, he wasn't recording a "we are the world" song with the other big names of the American music industry, he wasn't on another world tour that would get his hair on fire like it happened in the 1987 "Bad" tour in Japan, this time, he was fighting for his own life. 

I listened to every news story with fear and the agony of having your favorite celebrity in such a painful condition. It was either he was having to cancel a show due to health challenges or his doctor was telling the newsmen how bad his condition was getting.

The video clips of him appearing in public was nothing close to the same man that used to amaze the crowd on every stage. What I would see was a man that could barely even breathe having his security aids surround him and deep down, I wish they could protect him from what was coming.

I knew he wasn't going to get better but I couldn't even tell my self that. I never wanted to imagine a world without the King of Pop. It always felt like we were doomed if this legend went away.

25th of June 2009, I started hearing the rumors at school. A friend said he was dead, the other said he only fainted and the doctor was confused, another said that he died and resurrected after ten minutes. I bet you know how crazy these celebrity rumors get. Just so many things I never wanted to hear. 

The first thing I cared about at home was every from of the media I could find. Then the radio told me what I wanted to know but wasn't ready to hear. Michael Jackson, my beloved MJ, the King of Pop was gone. Damm!

"... American singer Michael Jackson died of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication..."  was all the media could say.

It's been ten years already but his works are still making his name evergreen.

Gone but never forgotten. Rest in peace the King of Pop.

Michael Jackson

August 29 1958 - June 25 2009

© Ifiokobong Etuk

( KING of the QUILL

#NOTEPAD

PATIENCE IN GROWING

Growth is certain and we all know that. It's part of the characteristics of living things we all learnt back then at elementary school, MR. NIGER D remember?

Growing is fun and beautiful. I mean the idea of having to record improvements and success is something every human being and organization in the world wants to do. It's very human and natural for anyone to do what is necessary in order to move up to the next step or level in any field of endeavor. 

Growth is long process, it takes time and requires a lot of work as well as patience and this is what most people lack. Many people just can't wait to see themselves at the top.

In the quest for growth, impatience is one infirmity that leads to opposite results in most cases. Many people want to grow so fast beyond the natural Order of things only to end up failing and this my friend is not what you want to do.

Understanding that seeking growth impatiently is dangerous is something you need to do and always remain conscious of.

In whatever you're doing, the process of growth will always be tough and time draining. Sometimes, the time frame maybe shorter and sometimes it might be longer but no matter what, you must stay patient and positive enough to make sure you undergo the full process for the purpose of your well-being.

You don't have to be in a rush for any reason because every second in the growing process is important and should not be neglected for the purpose of trying to be hasty.

I know it's hard to wait patiently especially in a world where people grow in different time frames. There will be days you'll feel like you are not making any progress maybe because someone your supposed to be with is way ahead of you or because someone you're supposed to be ahead of is coming up to your level and your aren't moving at all. You shouldn't feel bad at times like this because every person belongs to a different time zone of growth and no two persons share the same time frame in growing.

Some situations are bound to make it nearly impossible to remain patient. This sometimes makes us to doubt the process and start believing a lie that says there are easier ways to acquire growth without having to follow the natural process. In the real sense, this is actually when you need to be patient the most.

In all your doings, always remember that growth will certainly come and all you need to do is to work and wait patiently. It's going to be hard. It's going to be tough. It has always been that way. If growing was an easy task, then people at the top would have never been celebrated. No one would have appreciated Mohammed Ali if reaching the peak of a boxing career was easy, nobody would have celebrated Chinua Achebe if writing African literature was not an uphill task, we wouldn't have accorded any respect to Michael Jackson if becoming the King of Pop was something anybody could do, the men and women we look up to today as icons wouldn't have had these titles added to their names if what they did was easy, it was not, and it will never be easy and that is why those who get there deserve to be celebrated.

We will all get to the top one day. I mean you and I because we sure have what it takes to get there. All we need to do is remain patient enough to work on ourselves and develop steadily. In essence, growing till the apex will take long, but we must wait.

© Ifiokobong Etuk

(KING of the QUILL)

First published @FelieMac.com