The Fortress

I stand here, witness to a shelter God shaped
not from stone,
but from the quiet, patient ways He mended me.
A refuge lifted from the ruins of every moment
His mercy refused to let define my story.

For years,
I mistook strength for silence
but even the softest prayer can rise like wind,
and mine learned to swell
because God understood my trembling
before it ever touched my lips.

This place, His making
isn’t just somewhere to hide;
it breathes with the memory
of battles I thought would end me
yet left me standing.

Its doors hold the imprint of fears
my Father pressed into the past.
Its watchposts lean into the sky
because He has guarded both my midnights
and every new morning.

Do not call these walls fragile;
they were shaped by the One
who refuses to let my soul collapse.
Every beam carries His assurance,
every layer His voice
reminding me that surviving
is not disgrace, but grace.

I learned a fortress isn’t meant
to keep the world out,
but to remind the heart inside my heart
that it lives under His covering.

So I turn the lock on doubt
and pull wide the openings
where His Spirit enters,
letting courage breathe its way
through every hidden room of me.

So, If you see me standing higher than before,
it isn’t pride, it is gratitude.
Gratitude to the Most High
who raises me, and keeps on raising me.

For even iron can falter,
but the life held in His hands
learns to rise again and in rising,
His stronghold becomes my freedom.

UbdaPoet
©2025

THE ETHNIC WAR OF INNER VOICES WITHIN MAN

Hmmm…Have you walked down this lane?
The lane of the warring voices embedded in the mind?
Where voices rage war in the soft bones of your mind,
Over choices and decisions,
Voices sounding right under the spell of imaginative confusion,
Wrong when castrated of the spell,
Where reasoning becomes afraid to reason,
Cos even in the cause of reasoning choices coated in capsules of poison seize thy taste of choice,
Confused over nothing yet confused over everything,

Drowned in the ocean of counterfeited uncertified voices draining broken pieces of unfulfilled dreams sketched out,
These voices keep on speaking,
That the only surviving cartilage in the brain of my head has been ruptured
Unseen yet powerful and influential voices, trapped in myriads of scorn,
This is an inbuilt ethnic war,
Who can save me from this destiny device,
Where voices echo unraveled solutions and complicated ideas to same thing,
Which do my being become a slave to?

Rains of confusion has embarked on a rescue journey at the central park of my head,
Taking rest at the hallucinated desolate field of lost,
The sweet and gentle voice of procrastination has embalmed its statue in me and silenced my voice of reason placing it in the solitudinal grave of eternity,

I wear smiles wrinkled on the inside,
Spraying the perfume of faded smile to avoid panel of questioning,
Inner pimples has eaten deep my dimpled mind of rest,
Hiding under the cloaky face care of MARY KAY
To bring out the dimples amidst the pimpled troubled mind,

Which voice do I cling to?
The sugar coated diabetic voice or the fading- like silent voice embedded with thorns and water logged pathway to destiny,

OH!!! OH
War of voices within…
My soul has become aged at the peak of my youthful mind,
Let me think and make one… my permanent abode for a gloomy doom await the confused mind making choices,
Follow me on my journey but with cautioned silence.

Kanu Nonye

© 2018