Clouds nestling between the
dark craggy mountains,
sitting in the valleys like velvet cushions –
Silent solemn sentinels rising upwards,
peaks to greet these metal intrusions –
I wonder if they think we are just fleeting illusions.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Once we were light
But the world weighed us down
Drowned out our cry of resistance
And put a bandage over our eyes
A desperate cry for help
Before we fell silent
And started to look silently at our children
The way once our parents looked at us
Now we know what they were thinking:
Retain your magic! Retain your lightness!
Even as they said to us worriedly:
You have to learn to fit into the system –
Knowing it was not the way
But knowing no other way
Or knowing it but not having the heart
To push us off the cliff –
Because not everybody grows wings
When falling through the gap.
The generation gap.
Now we watch our children worriedly
Wanting them to become like us
And wanting them to stay themselves too.
Once we were light
But the world weighed us down.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
If every new generation
Rose up twice as high as the one before,
Humanity‘s elevation
Would see us soon knocking on heaven‘s door.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
In this world
You have to be small
To be big.
Big people
Are made small
By the world’s smallness.
If you are too big
You are too big
To be seen.
If you are small
You are big enough
For the small.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
To be vulnerable is to be honest. To be honest is to be vulnerable. To be different is to be vulnerable to be honest. To be different is to be honest to be vulnerable. It is a strange place to be everytime No matter how many times you go there. Each time it feels different. It requires bravery everytime. Even when you‘re familiar with it Still you never get used to it. Because it is different. Everytime. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
The most powerful thing you can give people is confidence. Self-confidence. But some people, once they have it they turn around and use it against you, who awakened it in them.
Next time, you feel like leaving people wallowing in their pitiful inferiority complex.
But a part of you still goes ahead and keeps on strengthening people who need it everywhere you meet them. What they later do with this strength and self-confidence is their business.
You have done yours.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Kwame, you would have turned 47 today, but that dream died a long time ago. You didn‘t even quite make it out of teenage.
But, brother, your few poems have long made it unto the pages of our hearts for all eternity, like footsteps on the sands of time.
Available on Amazon:
Footsteps On The Sands Of Time: (Poems)
– by Kwame Ekwueme Chukwumerije
Push yourself
That’s the best self-help
There is pleasure in release
Measure the mark and strike
It makes the blood run out disease
Warms the muscles
For the next days’ hustles
My thug passion is my third passion Working out my banger issues in the gym Controlled anger defuse
Rough dancing in my tough mansion
My thugz mansion
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
(Aka Teraka)
Time comes in pieces - Pieces of days Pieces of nights Pieces of weeks, of months, of years Eternity does not come all at once Or we would not enjoy it It comes in pieces of seconds Of minutes Of hours Eternity comes in pieces of moments Moments of depth and pain Moments of joy and experiencing Of learning and growing and gain. - Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Why was I born? Why were you born?
Into this Earth.
My birthday always makes me think. This year more than ever, I don‘t know why. The questioning thought: Everything I‘ve done in the last 48yrs, have they in any way really fulfilled the reason WHY I WAS BORN? Or have I up until now, in a deep subtle way, just been wasting my time? For I was not born in order to celebrate that birth annually. Viewed logically, that‘s a senseless feedback loop – unless augmented, nay, superseded, by a PURPOSE – and the fulfilment of that purpose – of my birth into this earth.
49 years ago, I was not here. I was not a part of this daily hustle and bustle, getting into cars and busses, voting in elections, raising kids, being earthy and doing the earthly. So, where was I? And why did I come here? Where were you before you were born? And why did you come here?
Every year the certainty that I‘m closer to my earthly death, to my departure. I just feel it, so strongly. That reduced distance. It‘s not just a piece of general knowledge that we all have: Everybody dies one day. Yes we all know this. But it is more than this. It‘s also a solid emotional perception, a physical presence that comes closer, that you can feel when you close your eyes and pay attention.
My birthday makes me think, not just of birth, but also of death.
My brother, Kwame, aged 19, died on my 21st birthday. It was a few weeks before his own 20th birthday. The person closest to me. Why did he come? Did he or did he not fulfil the purpose of it? And then he was gone again. It‘s a date we share, in life and death.
Life existed before we were born into it. It was perfect, already. Before we were created, Creation was already formed and perfect. This realisation makes me think and there is no end to this reflection. Just a clear line of perception – an intuitive perception:
You are not without a reason and not without a purpose, unless you fail – consciously or unconsciously – to discover that reason and that purpose; and then to – deliberately or instinctively – fulfil that reason and that purpose.
It‘s a serious and thought-provoking business meeting your birthday again, and still not knowing why. Or knowing if you’re fulfilling why, as best as you can. Year after year.
I don‘t need to celebrate my birthday. I need to reflect upon it.
Reflect before celebrate.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
06. April 2022
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 