TIME TO PART

It’s time to part
With peace of heart,
Reconciliation the chart -
Lord, how great Thou art.

Finally letting go
Of pain and sorrow,
Of wanting and woe -
You reap what you sow.
You forgive, forget and grow.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

EMOTIONAL FREEDOM

God is teaching me to not be emotionally dependent on any human being on Earth; to have nobody of whom I think or feel that I cannot live without this person. It’s a painful process, but to everybody who has rejected or is rejecting me, I say Thank you. Whatever your intention was, God has made something greater out of it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

ASK NOT

All I asked for was the truth -
But that question alone
was enough
to disturb, to disrupt
and to destroy everything.

Ask, and you shall be given.
Ask not, and you shall be forgiven.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE

Free yourself of the fear of losing her
Free yourself of the thought of having
Or not having her
That’s not for you to control or decide
Only God has that Power
The only power you have is the power of love
All you can do is to love her
Love is life and Love is light
If you have love in your heart for her
Then just love her
And if you have no way of directly giving
Or showing that love to her
Then just let the love flow through you
And flow out of you
And flow out into the universe…

Your love will find its way to her
In the workings of the universe
One way or another.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains and
Poems from the inner river

FINDING VALUE

Separate yourself from things
In order to know the value of things
Go deep into things
In order to learn the true value in things

Separate yourself from people
In order to know the value of people
Come close to, go deep into, people
In order to see the true value in people

Metamorphose away from yourself
In order to know the value of yourself
Develop again into your true self
In order to feel the value in being yourself.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE MOST VULNERABLE THING

The most vulnerable thing in this world is to open up to a person, to show the person your secrets and your true condition. To share with the person your dreams, your hopes, your fears, your phobia, your trauma, your beliefs, your feelings, your propensities, your weaknesses, your childlikeness, your unprotected true nature.

When you have thus exposed yourself to a person, vulnerable to the core, and the person – after taking a good look at you – rejects or betrays you, and directly or indirectly communicates to you that they find you to be unworthy of them, the damage that this experience can cause to a human soul is almost beyond the purview of what words can accurately describe. It is exceedingly humiliating, dehumanising, and robs you of your sense of self-worth.

It also gives reason to ask yourself, if you too have ever done the same to another human being, maybe even without realising it, and maybe you have even forgotten it. If you have, then it pays to reflect on how to reach those people once more and offer them correction, retribution, a cure, or just true heartfelt apology and remorse for having broken their soul.

Most of all, though, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the question of whether a human being’s sense of self-worth should at all be wholly or partly dependent on how they are seen or held or treated by another human being, probably one whom they love, or sometimes even a stranger. Or whether a human being’s sense of worth should be rooted only and solely in their own inner strength and inner dignity and Inner fidelity to their own core values. Or if it is a mixture of both extremes.

One thing is for sure, though, and that is that no matter how we see it, the reality is that even the strongest people are affected by how they are seen and treating by one person or the other, consciously or unconsciously, either a stranger or more commonly someone that they deeply love. No matter how we see it, we owe the duty to ourselves as human beings to be thoughtful, careful, honest – honest to ourselves and also honest to others – in order not to disappoint a valid expectation of reflected worthiness.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

DIE HARD

All the things I thought would kill me,
Didn’t kill me.
But they sure did hurt…
They hurt like hell for a long time -
But they didn’t kill me.
They made me wiser, stronger and sadder;
But in the end I’m still me.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WE EXPECT MORE FROM SEX

We expect more from sex than it can give. And when it fails to give it, we take more and more and more of it, demanding with even more intensity and urgency from it that which it is unable to give. Unable to give because, no matter how deep and intimate it is, in the end it’s still just sex. It can never fulfil your soul. And the real you, the human spirit, is in the soul. There is a depth of unhappiness that it cannot fill, a height of joy it cannot reach. There is a fineness and exactness of intimate connection which sex can only crudely attempt to approximate without being able to fill the gaps.

The gaps that sincerity can fill; the gaps that honesty can bridge; the gaps that integrity can close; the gaps that trust can repair; the gaps that homogeneity can make disappear; the gaps that reliability can heal; the gaps that a shared Ideal and a common goal can plug; the gaps that working together can eliminate; the gaps that intimate truthful conversations can undo; the gaps that a harmonisation of thinking and intuiting can cure. All the gaps that the best sex in the world cannot fill. No matter how often and creatively we try to find the fulfilment therein.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

A PART OF YOU

Sometimes a part of you
Can live outside of you
And run away from you
And refuse to come back to you
And will ignore you
And will not recognise you
And will reject you
And will hurt you
And will avoid you

Because the reason why
It is living outside of you
Is in order to find itself
And fully become itself
Through struggle, experiencing and reflection
Uninfluenced by you
In order to one day be able
To complement you
And be complemented by you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

ONE LOVE

You can only love one person, you can never love two people or even more. True love. In order to love another person, you have to first change and become a different person. But the person who loved that first person can never ever love another person. Once your heart has bonded, it can never ever unbond again, until it dies and becomes born again as a new heart.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains