Every time I want to go
Something tells me to stay
So far away from home.
Those who want to go end up staying
Those who want to stay end up going
So far away from home.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
English
THOSE THOUGHTS DON’T DISAPPEAR
Those thoughts don’t disappear
They keep living somewhere
In you… in me… in someone far away
From here…
Those thoughts don’t disappear
They keep working somewhere
In your world… in my world… or in a far away world
You don’t see and you don’t hear…
Oh, those quiet thoughts
That you’re thinking
Somebody’s picking
Round and round it goes, nothing’s new
And nothing’s hidden and nothing’s lost
Reap the sower must
Those thoughts, they don’t just disappear
They keep on growing somewhere
And one day… when you least expect it…
Oh oh oh, they’re back again in your life
Oh oh oh, they’re back again with their maker.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
PERCEIVED BUT INARTICULABLE INJUSTICE
The legal compass of the law cannot always accurately navigate through the inchoate map of human nature; and is often blind within the fine web of subtleties entangling human volitions and actions, truths and falsehoods. A criminal, in the sightless eyes of the law, is only a criminal if he has committed a crime according to the definition of the law, when proven.
The true needle of morality is the intuitive perception, which however has no legal weight of authority within the letter of the law, nor a clear line of communication with the intellect. Guiltless or not, it is up to the accused – or his legal defence team – to provide (or destroy) requisite proof. That’s how difficult, and easy, it is.
Humanity is, by choice, the legal prisoner of an approximation – one with which it has voluntarily entered into a compromise, for fear of having nothing better, nothing more exact. Thus our law will never apprehend every guilty person, while some of those it apprehends and condemns will be innocent.
All we are left with, in the end, are our intuitions and our perceptions; our sense of justice; and our longing for a better and more perfect humanity – a longing which we will pass on from generation to generation, like a torch in the dark.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
DIMLY
I touch my intuition
Every morning
And at night I remember it
Like a friend from long ago
Far away
On the riverbanks of dawn
I forget what I saw in the soft bright sunlight
Of nightly dreams
Sometimes during the day
It will beat
Like a weak heart
I barely hear, barely feel
Quietly inside
Between conversations of How are you?
How are the revenue figures doing?
Very poorly. Stop. And look into the water
And feel your life
Trying to flow back to you, in little ripples
Of intuitively perceived memory
Of the blue island.
Don’t shake your head
And tell me you don’t understand
I know you simply don’t remember…
But I remember you; dimly
Like a friend from long long ago
Far far away
On a blue island….
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
MEETING GROUNDS
Meetings such as these
Can take place anywhere
On streets or in the house of dreams
Or upon open pages
That, beckoning, beckon the words
Out of another heart
And if you want to write a poem
The poem will come to you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
LOVE TODAY
When you see the future
It becomes the past
And the future becomes again
Unknown to you
To spend your life exploring your future
Is to spend your time scrutinizing your past
It is to miss all the joy and pain
The moment holds for you.
There is only one future
The result of what you do today
There is only one past
Tomorrow it will be today.
Love me today. Make a new tomorrow
Hope is my crystal ball
I see your heart aching for laughter
And laughter after laughter.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
CLIMBING HIGHER
Another will come one day
Just as human, but deeper, realer
But tomorrow’s human will say
None can over yesterday’s be superior –
But higher (s)he shall be
And one day too shall write movingly
Of when another too shall in the future grace the stands
Who shall in turn be misunderstood and bereft of helping hands.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
MAKING MUSIC
This guitar I remember
Was once a part of my life
A most tender member
A most precious joint
The soil of the start
The point of the matter
The giver of self, she gave herself up…
This guitar I remember.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THESE ARE DIFFICULT DAYS
There is a well
A deep oily well
Bottomless
It has swallowed time
My life time
I live in the future
I live in the past
I can’t find the present
It has squeezed hours
Split seconds
I cannot find time
Time to explore time.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
MISTY PAST
On the way to Falkenstein
I knew you were mine
On the way from Falkenstein
I knew you were mine
But when we stood side by side
Upon that castled immortality
I knew only that the great divide
Yawns yet ‘twixt longing and reality
And if we true will call this meeting our last
Then, woman, never lie away our past.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 