What would the sky give
To uncage the clouds and set the rain free?
Everything she has; and yet
What’s the use?
You can set old secrets free
New ones will pile up inside again
For only what is hidden can set us free.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
This Poem was inspired by the Article: CONFESSIONS.
Happiness was close
Always close
A thought away
A recognition away
But that was always too far
For a young mind blinded
By too many choices
Too many voices.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Ada lifted her bag off the floor and lay it horizontally across her thighs, uncaged by her micro mini skirt. She extracted Tony’s poems now from the bag, which action had been earlier interrupted by the conductor, the look in whose eyes she was trying to push out of her mind.
They were six long sheets, on each one poem. If only he had a job or something, a steady, paying job, she would appreciate his poetry even more. She sighed. No, that wasn’t true. She appreciated and loved him and his anyway.
Her eyes, with part-reluctance, part-eagerness, settled on the first sheet of paper. She read the title and reflected on it… Dance Again. Then she was drawn again into the fluidity of Tony’s poetic philosophy. It had been a long time since she last read any of his poems, and deliberately so… but now she began to peruse:…
People, spoil
Very slowly change
For worse
Soil becomes hard,
Abandon tenderness
Childlike humility
Lose the ability to change
Remain
Where we stopped
Slide into oblivion, proudly
Anxiously
You and I, know it, lost it
Search again
Youth of today
Take it, purely purely
Dive not into pools of rot
Spoil not the young
Soil not the truth
When did we become rigid
Forget how to dance dance
Inner music?
Our world has played a nasty trick on us
Tenderly, self, dance again
That inner dance
Before rigidity
Forever stills us.
Ada smiled and sighed and saw again her brother’s heart and mind. Who he was. This was Tony. Forever still you. Suddenly it seemed to her as if she had just reunited with him after a long, much too long, separation. How could it have happened? When has they parted?
Then she lowered her eyes again, and read further, to know him all over again, her brother – Young.
Heaven-born come the young
Happy, simple, free, humble, strong
Hearts full of wisdom
Naïve, ready to establish some perfect kingdom
We were young
Never faltering, ever wandering with dream
With song
If the young shall rise anew
Then learn again to yearn, in deeds true.
She did not notice the woman sitting behind her, watching her intensely the whole time. Some people, they say, feel stares on the backs of the head. Ada was one such person, but not today. The poems had taken her away.
Behind her sat this woman, however, looking at her with a shocked question in her eyes, willing her to turn around. And when she didn’t, the strange woman put her face briefly in her hands and wondered what to do. Ada was the last person she expected to see on this bus. She knew Ada, but Ada did not know her. She took long deep breaths to steady herself, and wondered what to do…
Continued in Part Four.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
If you’re tired of These snippets, just buy the book on any Amazon store.
Twice IS Not Enough
Groupies gave you pleasure, but
Did not make you happy –
Only lonesomeness explained why
Too many moons kill the night
Too many moons spoil the dark
Pluck your moons one by one
From the autumn of imagination
One by one, let them rise
One by one, let them pass
In the absence of one
I had them all, but in truth
I walked with none
Talked with none, loved none
And the night was dark as day
And the night called a new moon
And night after night she grew
More and more beautiful as she
Slowly came, slowly stayed, slowly passed…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Two streams there are
Those who fall into the first
Find the waterfall of horizon.
Those who fall into the second
Forever fight against the current
That keeps them down, drowning…
And forever they’ll be unionists
Protesting against the upper classes
Who mock them from above.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
And we shall sing as though
There be no morning,
Hear the night sway softly along, my dear
My heart is trying to say something
But I’ve forgotten the language
Of my ancestors…
But when we sing, I remember
A time before Christmas and December
When red earth and green hill and blue sky
Were home enough for us.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I remember you
Almost everyday.
Do thoughts forget
Their creators? Heart
And common sense agree
In me that they never could.
I remember you daily.
Our childhood and youth
Made my heart what
It is today. And though
You’re gone who knows
Where in the Beyond,
Still my memories of you,
Brother, know no boundaries.
How many times did
We watch Joe Panther?
Little did we know that
We were watching our future.
For, like Tiger died and left Joe,
One of us would go
And the other would lonely stay.
And I remember how quietly
We sat, together, trying
To hold back and conceal
Our tears that first time
We watched La Bamba –
As if already then we knew
How it would one day feel.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
If you love someone, give them a Chance to hurt you. It’s not whether they hurt you or not that matters – they will – but the way and manner – how – they hurt you or try to hurt you.
This is what will tell you everything you need to know about the Person in relation to yourself, and about the nature and future of your relationship.
Only those who will love you to the end deserve to have the right to hurt you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
How deep is homogeneity?
Does the colour of our skin
Express our similarity
Or mask the differences within?
How deep is nationality?
Does the passport we share
Stamp an ideological ethnicity
Or is it convenience out of fear?
Some plant gardens of roses
Some love lilies alone
Another meadow composes
A bouquet of everyone
Who can say rose gardens
Are prettier than plains
That lilies alone gladden,
Or a field that all contains?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Don’t allow them to reduce you
To the picture they have of you
In the picture they have of themselves
Be proud of who you are
What you are, how you are
It is what the world needs
Stay. In your element, stay.
Be proud of who you are
But define it for yourself by yourself
Don’t be the canvas on whose back
They paint and admire themselves
And cover you up in the voiceless dark.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 