Is that sea or sand
Out of which the jagged
Jaggered, the daggered mountains
Arise?
A sea of sand
A limitless band beneath my eyes
A voiceless voiceless sea of cries
The mountains and the desert.
I fly away, I don’t return
A heart, I beat, within a metalbird
I sit and stare
At the weight of all the thoughts that I bear
World without end.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Only the one you love
Can make you feel small
And vulnerable
Go easy on love
Like a fresh leaf awakening
Let your every touch be thoughtful
I die when you kill me
I sigh when you kill me
I cry when you kill me
I have no shield against your thrust
Look into my eyes before you strike me dead.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I can’t sleep
Nor can I weep
If sadness were a grey cloud
I am the bottomless lake from which it arose
I miss your laughter, your mirth
Like dawn misses a birdsong
On a cold concrete city street
Before it fades away
Each time I burn pain into you
I burn pain into me; but if I
Were to not bite and hurt you so deeply
How would you continue to think of me?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
With every flight my thoughts take
In the sight of my heart
You become to me ever more natural…
A natural extension
No pretension.
I met you in your every age
At every which one of your many life-stages
I know your low, your high
Your I, for I have looked you in the Eye.
We shall grow. This is not the end
A new task. Opened, a new flask
Undone. Another mask, unmasked.
Another you. Another me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
My feet are stepping on me
My souls are brutalised
My grass is Thorn, apart
Strangers
Are laughing in glee
But my children do not understand
It is the foolish lizard
Who nods along wisely
To the snake’s slithering sermon
A child slaps his father
And corrects him
Did you hear the sky fall down?
Are you not ashamed?
If it is wisdom,
Why is it vestigial?
A short tree, shorter than me
Has peed on me –
Can I take it like a man?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I see
Wavering eyes
Tied around my ankles
Tightly beaded the masquerade stumbles
The drums think it is a dance and praise on
The familiar djini pokes his feathered skull
Out of the future – here I am!
Leaden feet leading until again
We stand on the river bank…
Sorry, where exactly?
We have been singing for the boat
Since time immemorial –
Unreversedly.
The mamiwater’s melodious silence answers us
Yet our ancestors did not lie
When they reassured us that the only
Real things are the invisible ones
Who refuse to see us.
If there be no boat
How shall the river
Cross us over
Onto the promised sand?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A smile is a gift-wrapped heart
A heart is an unspoken smile
You grow on me
Windows open up too
A transparent pane of glass
I see you through
Houses head upward
But we speak one tongue
This time. We change hearts
Like we change lanes –
We grow on us.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Some wounds cannot heal
Don’t open them for they are
Like the clock that ticks only forward
How ever often the cycle closes
Yet the wound still bleeds
Because I saw into your mind
All the I’m sorrys in this world
Only make it worse
We met, it seems, just to miss.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The worst pain I ever felt
Was once when I embraced someone
And my embrace, she said,
Made her think of someone else.
Some things you should keep to yourself,
Yet it’s better when they’re spoken out
And it’s best of all when they hurt like hell.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Women are so serious, you know
There’s a way she looks at you sometimes
From beneath her eyelids
And you know
She’s taking a second look
Because you passed the first test
Then even your heart skips a beat
You don’t want to fail the test
But you don’t want to pass it either
Oh how you want to pass it! Oh no
Oh yes – oh, shut up! Men are pigs.
Just be grateful for whatever she gives you
And try not to mess it up too much
You don’t deserve it anyway.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 