2013

TOUCHING A FLOWER

~ Che ~ 6 Comments

THERE ARE friends you know that you have stored deep within your heart. These friends are blown in by the wind, borne in by a river… a golden river. There are people you know that even if you were parted from them, you would never forget them… There are spirits which share with you a part of your wanderings through creation. Those to whom you entrust your secrets, knowledge about your faults and questions and contradictions… and you know that you are one. That you share so many similar things.

A flower. Who can touch, who can break, who can soil a flower? Who dares? A speaking bird once said to me: “Life is a forest, a jungle, full of wild trees, wild fruits and wild beasts, wild sounds and hunters and preys and the sounds of the forest. You will meet everything, each thing in its own place. Separated according to their species. But there is one thing which you will see everywhere. Always you will see a flower somewhere.

“It will appear unexpectedly from beneath hidden rocks, betwixt twisted trunks, hover above unreachable branches, glow in the rays of the moon, there will always be a flower somewhere.

“Think not that every flower you meet you are permitted to touch…

“Though they warm your heart, raise your spirits, brighten your soul, relieve your mind, inspire you and encourage you…, yet think twice before you touch a flower, consider well before you pick one off its stem. Maybe the simple pleasure that the sight of it has given you, is all it is supposed to bring you. Ask yourself: are you worth it? Will it blossom and bloom in your hands as beautifully as it blossoms and blooms on its own? Is the soil of your heart ready to keep a flower alive? If not, wait… wait for when you will be ready to touch it and plant it in your heart. There will always be one flower waiting for you…

“And should you wander into the desert of life too, your longing to see a flower is what shall see you through. Yet shall your longing not be in vain. For you bear your flower within. Always within. Watered by your love, sunned by your gratitude, rooted in your heart, it will always bloom by your side.”

And so I set forth… but I confess that her words I forgot. Many a flower that delighted my heart I snapped and inhaled and left to wither by the roadside. So crashed I triumphantly through the jungle like a King, littering the path behind me with the fading sadness of flowers I had touched and crushed and left to wither in my restless memory.

In the desert it is eerie and burns like a furnace. Thorns bleed my bare feet, one for every flower I once carelessly crushed. How I long now for a flower, for the sight of a flower again. This eternal desert which the forest has become. I remember all the flowers that litter my past. Would that I had planted just one inside my heart, in my life.

Yet there is one. Brief had been our meeting, short my sight of her. I had reached for her, but strong branches had kept her beyond my reach. The speaking bird had hovered on the branches around her, singing into her ears. Her smile was all I got, and oh how this I treasured. She alone comes back to my mind now, over and over and over again. And as I trudge on through the desert, following the bird that appears and disappears, it is the hope of seeing her again that keeps me alive.

The one flower I left unhurt is the one that shall heal my wound.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

THE DAILY TRAINRIDE

~ Che ~ 5 Comments

In the skyline grey
Memory hung
The future gone astray
Emptiness stung
Hung with reality in the greying city
The dying trees, the loveless pity
Duplicity and winding and twisting, reflecting
The beast in the best of the robots erecting
Their concrete phalli, their bull’s I’s, to scratch the sky
The insatiable itch, impotent ambition, try and try
And try as you might, your might is the limp cloud
The wilted grass, the lonely office, the empty crowd
The quiet madness, the gory glory
The daily trainride into another same story
The casual business of getting by
Between yesterday and tomorrow
A moment of reflection, gone, a sigh
Of something neither joy nor sorrow.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

I WANT TO THANK YOU

~ Che ~ 7 Comments

I want to thank you
For letting me grow when I needed growth
And letting me go
When I needed space
And letting me be
When I needed the chance
To find my way back to you…

I want to thank you
For being my heart quietly beating inside
For being my mind
Mercifully sparing me the torture of unsolicited thoughts
For being my laughter
And my hope and my comfort
And my certainty that the sun will rise
And for being my home
When I lost my way.

I want to thank you
For believing in me when I lost faith in myself
For waiting for me
When I was searching for myself
In the fields of everything I am not
But think I ought to be
For planting your sadness like a quiet seed
In my heart
And reaping it with your joy
When it bore rich fruit
Because I understand.

And for many more things I want to thank you
Which I have no words to say…
Yet you understand.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

JETZT BIN ICH

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

Als ich jünger war
War ich lichter

Jetzt bin ich
Dichter geworden –

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

IM FRÜHLINGSHERZ

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

Immer grünt Immergrün
Immer wieder blühn
Verzeihung und Bemühn
Im Frühlingsherz –

Auf lebt dein Lachen wieder
Und übt schon neue Lieder
Im Frühlingsherz.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

BEING GENUINE

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

A foolish student
Will one day become a wise teacher
An unyielding sinner
Will one day become a moving preacher

The gap that yawns in you today
Will be filled by the pain of growth
Perfection and Imperfection may look like opposites
But when they arise in you, embrace them both

Because you don’t know which is which
Who is really poor and who is really rich.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

REICH

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

Du machst mein Herz reich und weich…
Du bist ein Teich, in den ich tauche
Ein Halt, den ich brauche…
Ein etwas in meinem Bauch –
Du machst mein Herz weich und reich.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

ALWAYS THERE

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

I saw three things up in the sky
Two birds and the moon
The birds flew away
While the moon remained
For a few hours,
And then was also gone…

Will you make me a promise, love
Never to be gone?
But like the sky be always there
Even when all else is gone.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

THE EARTH IS NOT MY HOME

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

The earth is not my home
Although she ever seems
To weave fine birds that her heights roam
Like I do in my dreams

The earth is not my home
Although she always tries
To spread bright hues across her dome
Like in my home’s blue skies

The earth is not my home.
However hard she plot
To dull my homesickness with foam
She in the end cannot

The earth is not my home
And yet I wander here
And know that when my end is come,
Strange, still I’ll shed a tear.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

ZUSAMMEN SCHWEIGEN

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

Mit Schweigen
Werden redlich tausend mehr Empfindungen
Die zum Verschwinden sowieso heutzutage neigen
Sich einigend auf unterschwelligen Schwingungen
Sich zum Erkennen zeigen.

Während unseres Schweigens
Habe ich gehört,
Daß Du warst gestört
Und daß Du warst empört
Und hast aufgehört

Zu beachten die Botschaft unseres Schweigens –
Doch Dein aller-schönstes Lachen
Und Dein aller-größtes Machen
Ersetzen niemals das, was sie brachen:
Das Selbstverständliche unseres schönen Schweigens.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.