I am the one who left the herd
Who defied the labels outcast and nerd
Who made roses out of turd
Who broke his word to keep his word
Who seeks the unknown, victory assured
Who sang the strange song your spirit heard
I am the one, he, the strange bird.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Life can be a study in irony
The more people I know
The fewer friends I have
And when the night loves me
It fills me cruelly with loneliness
For it wakes me up in the dark quiet hours
But makes no effort to satisfy me
And the more I get the things I desire
The more I realise that what I really desire
Is something that already I have.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Wary of thirst
Wary of wandering
Weary, I wet my cup
In a wellspring I met
By the wayside
And when I put my lip
To its wet lip, the cup shivered
For bitter was the bile
That rose up from the well
And choked its heart
Traveller, it sang, in a voice
That wavered in the distance
Guard your thirst –
For not every bird that sings
Sings of dawn.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Unusual is the hand
That can count backwards
The name of the original land
That birthed its ancestors forwards
Every many generations the slate is wiped clean
You think you are there where you always have been
But most every native is a fruit of some old migrant tree
That forgot its deep roots in some distant ancient century
And some disappeared Country.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
When they seek bread
You hesitate to speak
Of the bread of life
For they look you in the eye
And say
Can’t you see that I’m hungry?
How can you make
The spirit strong
When the body is still so weak?
And so you fall silent
And wait with the rest,
For the rest, in peace…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Prose is a form of hiding
Within a forest of words
Poetry it is that betrays
The wounds behind the words
Prose says a lot of things
In order not to say one thing
Poetry says one little thing
In which is contained everything.
Where does pain come from?
Does it, like the wind
Arise when hot air rises
And the cold creeps in within?
Where does time go
While we’re waiting for it?
Where do you find hope
When you’ve lost it?
There is a flame
It is your spirit, it burns
It touches upon a point
That yearns and yearns and yearns….
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The deepest pain I had
The loneliest shame
My most sacred joy, yet I share
My most personal hopes
I not only voice
But unclothe in poetry’s inner light
So you see
More than you wish to see
Because all true art is
A private experience.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I saw hope, lost
On the hills, amnesiac
And she was
Looking for hope.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
And then you will see
That blind people see
The things that are invisible
To you and to me
And then you will hear
What the deaf loudly hear
When silence is all
That you and I hear
And then you will understand
That children understand
To store deep in their memory
Things they don’t yet understand
When a moment full of pain
Opens up your heart again
And you learn to look again
And see again, and hear again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Children are united
By childhood
Adults divided
By their adulthood
Too smart is the mind
That sees division
The spirit is inclined
To strive for union.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 