SLOWNESS AND SPEED

Many times tomorrow comes today
If you finish today’s task early;
Many times yesterday returns today
If you finished it prematurely;
They rhyme and seen to be the same thing
But will each result in a different ending.

It’s a fine line between slowness and speed;
Knowing the difference between need and greed;
To capture and move like eyes when they read;
Quickness must follow, Thoroughness must lead;
The path from intuition, through thought, to deed;
Only through fulfilment can you be freed.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

CHANGE COMPLETELY

What a difference a year can make -
Even half-a-year of experiencing can remake
Mind and soul, body and spirit completely.

How quickly the present becomes the past,
It never ceases to amaze me.
I look at pictures from just a week ago last
And it’s a different life already,
A different time, a different world, a different me,
A different you - my view has changed completely.

Everything always Happens quickly,
You take it immediately or you lose it swiftly.
When the seasons change, they change completely.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE WAY OF GOODNESS

The fact that a thing goes the way it goes
Doesn’t mean it was meant to go that way
But in the end, however way it goes,
If you follow goodness, it will go your way.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

MOVE!

Move! You have to move!
Always you have to move move move!
Change change change! Move
And move again and again
Keep moving keep changing your lane
Joy and pain sunshine and rain playing and praying
And always adjusting and recalibrating
And moving and moving and moving
And constantly growing and improving.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

CHALLENGE OF THE PRESENT

When they were living
It was for them not the past;
Now that we are living
It is for us also not the past.

It is always the present -
And it always feels the same;
For some it feels like the end,
For others like the start, of the game.

The future will one day look back
And call our present their past -
But their present too will hold them back
With the same challenges of the past.

It always demands bravery
Without the benefit of hindsight;
To act without knowing if posterity
Will prove you wrong or right.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WHAT YOU FELT YOU WOULD FEEL

When the worst happens,
The thing you fear the most,
A strange thing happens:
Your fear becomes a ghost.
It was never real,
It was imagination,
It was expectation -
What you felt you would feel.

But aren’t we spirit? Pain is the hand
That forces us to grow and to understand
There’s nothing ‘twixt the sea and the sand
That can’t be healed by spirit’s magic wand.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TRANSIENCE

You cannot reproduce the past
What is gone is gone
The present was never built to last
A moment later, it is done.
Over and done with.
All that’s left to reminisce on
Will be legend and myth.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

UNMISSING A PERSON

You know, when you do not
Want to stop missing a person, but…

One morning you rise
and go through the day and only
In the evening do you realise
That today you forgot to be lonely

And in that moment when you remember
That person, you wait for the familiar pain…
But as sure as August breaks into September
The ache is gone, you’ll never feel it again.

You know, when you do Not
Want to stop missing a person…
Because missing that person
Is the only thing you’ve still got -
But…

One day even that leaves you too.
Yes, even you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

REJECTION

When people reject you 
They don’t realise they’ve done you a favour;
You can move on from the rejected you
And metamorphose into a higher nature. 
Had they accepted you 
You would have remained the old creature
In that lower state unaware that you
Could have activated this new extra feature
That has deepened, strengthened, elevated you.

Rejection is ejection into motion,
An injection of self-reflection 
Towards redemption and transformation. 
An injunction to move, and motivation 
To self-improve in a new direction
With grit, with purpose, and with intention.
On the path towards self-realisation
and self-actualisation, every new rejection
Is another tiny course-correction. 

Che Chidi Chukwumerije 
Poems from the inner river 

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

Those that live in foreign lands
But never really left their home
Whose hearts never cup the sands
Upon which their reluctant feet roam
And the prints made where each boot stands
Will be washed away by the evening foam
Of a suspicious tide that never understands
The ripened fruits of an alien-like biome - -
Ye shall go back home with empty hands
To a strange land that is no longer home.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river