English

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

ROUGH FRUITS

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

I need everything
And I need dearth
I squeeze the leaven
To open the girth
My hour is eleven
Narrow, not straight
Rough sun having
Your fun on my mirth
When you burn my raven
Rekindle my hearth
I need Heaven
But I also need Earth.

– 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.

AT HOME

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

When you already have
What you’re looking for
What are you still looking for?

What are you still living for?

Some live to find – when they find
Their life finds meaning

Some live to seek – when they find
Their life loses meaning

They must seek a new meaning
To their lives

To appreciate what you already have
To cherish it, to nourish it, to
Protect it, maintain it, value it and
Valorise it
Make something more out of something less.

Sometimes there is nothing better
Out there.

– 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.

DARKLIGHT

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

Strike the spirit
They long for pain
The pain of breathing and moving
When the very sun begins to rain
And they die in pleasure
And feel alive again.

And to feel the sunrain
Dry and wet on soul
Burning hot
And awakening stonecold
Clarity of perception
Through a hole came the whole.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO LIVE WITH A STRANGER?

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

You cannot find like-minded people
Until you know your own mind
If you know not what you seek
You won’t know when you find
You will walk with your enemies
Your friends you’ll leave behind
You will feel no sense of belonging
Wherever you yourself bind
For without a sense of orientation
Or self-knowledge, you are blind.

And then there are those that will say:
You must stick to your own kind

So some stick to their race
And some to their nation
Some to religion and faith
Some to culture and tradition
Some stick to their gender
Some stay in a certain generation
Some remain within a field of thought
Or choose those of like inclination
Some share in an agenda
Some an intuitive perception

Some are united in what they seek
Some are united in what they find

Some will leave you when they find you
Because it is themselves that they seek
Some will seek you when they lose you
Because it was you who took them to their mountain-peak
And showed them their inner freak
Because – give me a break –
Who on earth does not secretly
Want to be a freak?

You like the taste of many soups
And are a part of many groups
And yet nobody knows who you really are deep inside –
Not even you yourself, with whom you always abide.

– 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.

BREAK COCOON

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

The tomb
Heaven’s womb
The womb
Death’s tomb

When did you stop caring?
When you stopped fearing.
Your life is a window you’re wearing
Your death is an illusion you’re bearing

You can break with your past
Without committing suicide
Look out and cast
Your nesting mast
And thinking nests outside
Out wide.

You are not
What you think you are
What they think you are
What you’ve been told you are
What you’ve never been told you are
Because you forgot.

– 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.