Intuitions

DYING STARS

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In our hearts we feel it sometimes, we know it fullwell, even when we deny the feeling to everybody, including ourselves and our best friends, yet we know: the star is dying…

There you see it, in the spiritual firmaments of the decaying soul. It used to be a bright star, friendly and confident, and pure as miraculous crystal. Once, it shone and sparkled, twinkled and flared and brightly laughed like a flaming eye in the skyscapes of who you truly are… in the skylines of your sensitivity and consciousness.

What is that song which just faded out? It was not any ordinary song, nay. It was the star that lived, and died…

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

NOSTALGIA’S DONE

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Just now I saw a morning star, luminous in the sky high up above me. And then suddenly I see it no more. Blue-grey clouds are journeying past in silent, ominous solemnity. Morning has dawned. The birds, they are a-singing. Early people are writing their feet into the road… and I am sitting outside, writing poetry and pretending it is prose.

Perhaps by the time I am through, and raise my head anew, the clouds would have gone completely by, and my star will be visible to me again. But if not, yet still I carry within me the picture of my morning star, as luminous in my heart as it was luminous in the sky.

I suppose this is what they call Nostalgia.

Now, see: the sun is rising, and the light is come again. Star, sun and light. And there is spirit inside of me – spirit and love.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

HISTORY AND DESTINY

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Plenty of questions but no gaps, only seeming gaps – but how would you know unless you first tried to fill the gaps in answer to your questions? Then you fathom that you are the gap, you are the question, and the answer rests in you.

Plenty of questions, but not all are gaps. Plenty of gaps, but only some are visible, while the rest, the sleeping questions, are still waiting for you tomorrow. You don’t even know your deeper questions yet, the ones that will really tear you out of yourself and make you a part of something bigger than you could ever conceive of today.

Because you are the gap and the question, you are the answer, the future and the fate. And the more you find yourself, the more you find your questions. And the more you find yourself, the more you find your answers. Until there are no gaps left, and everything becomes simply the story.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

TENDER SPOTS

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There is in me a very soft spot for naked tables and chairs, pens and empty sheets of paper, and a feeling that if I do not write the poem write now, it will never come again. It is a very special soft spot and very dear to me, sees me through lonely nights and empty restless days and times of unfocused focus and focused unfocus and is much better than many other a pleasure.

The heart is inside, the voice outside, and a strong voice without a heart is as baseless as the pointlessness of a voiceless heart, burning and knowing and mute. I have a very soft spot in me for that quick tender urge that would have me run again, a pen upon waiting sheets, a snow-lion stalking buried treasures, a singer learning and singing new songs, simultaneously.

Water is the king and when your heart runs like water, poetry becomes an uncheckable force – everywhere you hear it… everywhere you hear it. It follows you, it enters you, it captures you until you have mastered yourself in it, then it sets you free to roam again. Yes, this is my jungle.

I have in me a so soft spot for that glowing star, yonder flame that has decided to call me Home. Yes, Song, let it ring, and with my life I will follow, poet and musician and man. There was a beginning but, I vow, there shall be no end to eternal tenderness inside you and me.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

MASKING MASKS

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What you see is but a mask, not a face, not the true face, but a mask, a facade, masking the first mask, the true mask which once upon a time was the face of a human soul. But now it’s a mask, the real mask, masking nothing again but emptiness. The mask becomes the life, the life becomes the mask, masking everything, but unable to mask our emptiness.

So when you finally succeed in unmasking one, it would do you good to bear in mind that the face you discover underneath is again nothing but another mask. And you keep unmasking them, one mask after another, one lost dream after another, one tomb after another.. and all you see are masks, masking masks, round and round the mulberry bush. And when you finally begin to ponder and wonder: But where then is the human, the wearer of all these masks? Where are we? What are the masks hiding, then, if all we encounter are masks?…

Then, dear friend, you must understand that the ugliest of all these masks is now the human being himself, and what we are hiding is the fact that we have lost our true face forever.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF

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You will find, strangely enough, that you actually secretly desire the downfall of the person, place or thing that you love.

You will find, strangely enough, that the person you hate is the person you love; and the thing you fear is the thing you hope for; and the place you leave behind is the place you are going to.

You will find, strangely enough, that your friends envy you, and you envy your friends; and your enemies admire you, and you admire your enemies.

You will find, strangely enough, that you long for what you cannot have, and disdain what is easily yours; and already you have what you are still seeking for.

You will find, strangely enough, that the biggest fool is inside you and the wisest sage resides there too, and the fault which you can tolerate the least in others is the very one which you finally have the most.

You will find, strangely enough, that love is like the air and, thus, everywhere – and, like the air, sometimes you breathe and sometimes you suffocate.

And I also wonder why the other world always seems more intriguing to the person just coming from it.

What am I looking for? Anywhere I go, you go. And, in the end, you will call me your teacher, your helper, your friend. But I, I cannot help but try to understand what happened to me as I fell.

You will find, strangely enough, that even after I’ve hurt you, you still love me; and after I’ve healed you, you still detest me; and after you’ve comprehended me, you still fear the unknown side of your destiny.

So why not just open up your eyes once and for all, and do it all over again – and, this time, do it right.

You will find, strangely enough, yourself.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

I MET AND LEFT A MOUNTAIN

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There you see her, over yonder, bathed in beauty and love… it is the beautiful mountain which I once peaked – wild and calm, primitive and yet new and fresh, a restorative to my battered soul.

But when it was time to move, I discovered that I could not take the beautiful mountain along with me, however hard I tried; so I left her behind and journeyed on. Yet, strange to say, with each step away from her that I take, she comes more alive, grows bigger and bigger within my heart – because when I left her behind me to find the Tomorrow Mountain;… when I forsook her for to seek the next peak;… I took her along. But if I had stayed with her, then in truth I would have departed from her. And, tomorrow, when I crown a new beautiful mountain, she will also be there, for all true mountains unite at every distant new peak again.

It is hard to explain in words the things which we harbour inside of us. I too try and try, but ever and again I fall short of fulfilment. Why? Where did I go wrong?

Tomorrow is the only friend I have.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

INTO THE SECOND CALM

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A period of difficulty, well endured with reflection and honesty, will awaken calm within the soul. Calm brings clarity.

If you continue to rise higher while calm, you will one day break into a second world of utter confusion which jumps upon you just when your calm reaches its peak. This second confusion is the most difficult path, because it confounds your new knowledge and laughs at your newfound calm. At its height, you will lose all hope.

If, however, you remain calm, even in the heart of your confused hopelessness and hopeless confusion, something New will awaken within and overtake you, and set you free, reborn. Because from the valley the next step is upwards, provided you have not first buried yourself in dejection in the valley.

Even when there is no hope, yet continue to hope. Even when you are broken, and rebroken, yet trust in life. – And you shall enter into the Second Calm. And, come what may, nothing and nobody can take away this Calm from you, because it is the other side of pain, where spirit dies no more.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

WISDOM

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Wisdom. To see the limitations of others, and see the limitations in myself which stop me from seeing the limitations in others.

Wisdom. To accommodate the faults of others, and to accommodate the faults in myself which prevent me from accommodating the faults in others.

Wisdom. To understand the confusion of others, and understand the confusion in myself which blocks me from understanding the confusion in others.

Wisdom. To fathom foolishness, and fathom that which can never fully fathom the foolishness of man.

Wisdom. To be aware of my ignorance, and of my knowledge, and of the difference between the two.

Wisdom. Lord, make me wise in Thine Ways. Amen.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

HOW DO YOU STOP LOVING SOMEONE?

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How do you stop loving someone? How do you forget her eyes and her face and her secret smile and the unwordable look she bears upon her countenance?

How do you stop loving someone? How do you forget the times shared? How do you forget the Love, the eternalness of your togetherness? How do you make it right forever?

How do you stop loving someone? How do you uproot love from your soul? A love that wants to remain. Someone who loves you so. A union that begs for fulfilment. How do you not continue an ancient story in a modern world? How does an old tune not give birth to a new tale? How does a stream die?? It just resurfaces in other places…

How do birds of one wing not visit heaven together? How does loneliness not seek itself? How does fire not burn? How do sowed seeds not grow? How can you restrain the moving sun, unless you first stop the rotation of the earth…? But then how so many other people die, how many other things are lost?

How do waterfalls desist from falling? Two elephants in one heart, two hearts in one elephant. If you kill the elephant and open the heart in order to understand this phenomenon, what if they all die, elephants and hearts?

How do you stop loving someone? I don’t know.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.