That which is over
Feels like a dream
Even if it ended
Just yesterday
No matter how far in the past
No matter how far away
An unended story lies
It is with you here today
The heart is a miracle of chapters
Where pages grow blank
And as the days turn to nights and back
So life turns the pages of your heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
What is poetry? Rounding up a collection of old news and new olds too, poetry is the sea that washes the shores of my heart; and each time the tide is out I pick up the treasures which the sea has deposited on the sand this time. If we do not mark the sand, how shall we pick the shells? The sea is a strange one. She journeys her own Depths every dream and discovers strangers every morning. In every human there is an explorer. Some explore distant poles, some explore nearer goals, some explore the gardens in our souls. Poetry is a garden, and those who find the garden understand the poem.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The drums of war are sounding
The dead are readying to dance a dirge
Upon the graves of the living
Quarrelling woman to Solomon has spoken
If I won’t have world peace my way
Then tear the child to pieces
Those who crave world dominion
Are set to fight to the end to end
The culture of mixed opinions
The world grows dark with worry
And mothers clutch their babes to their breasts
And lovers fear what tomorrow will bring.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Might is not right –
Right is might.
This right is not the opppsite of left
Is not the right of fraternity bereft
This right is conscience
Is humanity in its essence
And the path to its Height.
– This right Is MIGHT.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
If I wrote seventeen poems
In one word
Would you understand my language?
If I wrote one word
Sung one love-song
In seventeen poems
Would you understand my language?
What if they were eight?
What if they were eighteen?
If every human smile were a poem
Every laugh a song
Every look a promise
If every human word were silence
You would not need seventeen poems
To understand me
Just one.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I have a lonely brother, born of a single mother and father, lonely and alone, trudging patiently home through the land of snow-mountains and smoke-forests and sandy deserts, not to forget the bottomless sea. He has few friends, for few comprehend him, even though he treasures the goal also all so alone. I want to help him, but I do not know how to, nor does he always accept help. I know only that, in the end, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Are you lonely, brother? Nobody is ever alone. An angel, a beast or a solitary star – one of these is always there with you and me. If I am not my brother’s keeper, who is? And whose keeper then am I? I guess I keep again our second goal.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There is a Nigerian saying
What a child cannot see from a treetop
An adult can see from the ground
They usually say it with a gentle smile
The boy that I was, the child now in me
Was nourished by my mother’s love
While the man I was becoming, who now I am
Was nurtured by my father’s severity
So when they say true love is severity
And severity is sometimes the truest of love
I guess I know now, in retrospect,
What they mean to say between the lines
It is impossible to see both sides –
Day and Night – simultaneously
You have to experience them one by one
And then piece it together in your mind.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Transported by the tides of love
Inspired by the love of One
I sat down in a cove,
All alone.
My heart gushed forth with deepest love
For I love two women, not one;
Thus pause I in a cove,
All alone.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
To laugh heart to heart always. To cry heart to heart always. No heart on today’s earth can laugh completely without first crying completely, because only that Pain can unbolt a bolted heart – the pain of friendship. Friendship does not come easy, even when you think it just popped up right from the very first moment – that was merely the seed. Now you have to plant it, water it, tend it, nurture it patiently – and, hopefully, finally reap the fruit and the flower, after the pain… the pain of friendship. I will always be your friend, I vow. When it grows dark, remember my words…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Sometimes it seems
As though the valley were the
Mountain-peak,
The mountain-peak the valley
Sometimes it seems
That to arrive at the valley
I must first arrive at the mountain-peak
And, sometimes, to arrive
At the mountain-peak, I must
Arrive at the valley
Which is the valley
Which the mountain and
Which the peak? –
Sometimes, Baby, it seems
As though to find you I must leave you…
And sometimes it seems as though
When I want to leave you
I’ll only end up again by your side
Sometimes, when I am Dreaming
I think I am awake –
But I have never once thought myself a dreamer,
Not even while I dreamt.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 