Of Contemporary Assessment

BRINK

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

The world is changing under your watch
There is hatred abroad, fear is at home
Never was it easier to manipulate the future
Crowds of boomerangs are rushing out of the past
Back to the present

When events take this turn, sharply
When all the resentments flower
When cultivated prejudices become seasoned culture
All that’s needed is a reason, a trigger, a spark
There is no hiding place

Everyone has got a grudge to prove
The dark hearts will plunge the world into chaos
And watch the good people tear themselves to pieces
– Who will rise above their shadow
And solve a paradox?

Everybody has been aching for the final conflict
Woe betide us
When it finally comes upon us.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

AS IF THEY WERE GIVING

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Dead trees
blowing in the breeze
as if they were living,
yet they are dying

Foreign lands
stretching out their hands
as if they were giving.
But they are lying…

They are taking, taking back
what they lack
More than what they give –
they need More to live.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

THE BOOK OF LIFE

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You’ve judged too soon
Go, take a second look
Sometimes you’ve got to give a little room for error
’Cause you can’t always be too sure –
Don’t spare yourself a second look
Read it again – life’s just a book.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORLD AROUND YOU?

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Music made me
A bird saved me
A smile undid me
A woman slew me
A friend betrayed me
And I dug myself out of the Grave.

A wound bled me
A sword healed me
A dream baffled me
A heart became me… became I…
A Call reached me
Here, there and everywhere –

Now, tell me
If you understand humanity yet?

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

UNDER A SPELL

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When all is sad and done
Truth lies on you clumsily
Against you it’s all mad up

Love hates you so badly
In hell you’re in heaven
Mine eyes have sin it all

Cut up in the rupture
In the mist of my foes
True friends are had to find

Every day a new stat
Just role with the blow
Role with the blow, stranger
Not even a manger protects from danger
When people know you can see their soul
They mind.

So read your friends with fear
Your foes with care
The ability is rare.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

PS: there are no spelling errors in this poem.

SAVED BY LONELINESS

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This morning
When I woke up
My loins were weeping
With longing for you –

Thick manly tears
Wasted on the banks of distance
The smeared silence of morning
Frustration, the fury of loneliness

Dark has been my desire
As bright as love.
Take me away
I need something stronger than hope.

That’s when my spirit spoke up.
I did not know there were so many daggers
Knifed into my back
Yet I am still alive.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
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BACKTEETH OF REALITY

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The world rotates,
A restless insomniac,
Lays on its back
Upon its bed of thorns

The bedsheets are sweating
Blood and brine
Midnight is crying for dawn.
A dream crashes to death everyday –

What laws really govern our lives?
No constitution
No legal textbook
Can capture the reasons and dynamics of living

So why don’t I stop wasting my time
With laws that terminate at death;
Seek instead for those that ever were
Ever will be.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

YAWN DAWNING

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We are not a new Generation
We are just a new generation-gap

The end is still a promise away
The new beginning is not ours to anchor
We are the same as our fathers of yesterday
We are the repetition of our every ancestor –

We are not a new Generation
We are just a new generation-gap.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
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CLASS DIVIDE (II)

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It’s called the hardworking middle-class
Let’s call it the narrow mountain-pass
For it keeps nervously thinning out

The underworld is getting crowdy
And impatient and restless and rowdy
Getting ready for a bout

The top one percent noiselessly feeds
Off the profits, the interests, the proceeds
No sound, no word, no whisper, no shout.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

CLASS DIVIDE (I)

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

Two streams there are
Those who fall into the first
Find the waterfall of horizon.

Those who fall into the second
Forever fight against the current
That keeps them down, drowning…

And forever they’ll be unionists
Protesting against the upper classes
Who mock them from above.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.