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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A child will fall ill today
His parents will weep
Not because the child is ill
But because there is no safety net
To catch the weak and defenceless
In the land of the Niger and the Benue
Every fall is a fall
Through the cracks
Down to the rock bottom
Your savings alone might save you until
Your savings are gone – then, if you have
No rich family or friends, citizen you’re done
A man will lose his job today
A woman will lose her home tonight
Do not tell them not to weep
For they’re falling and there’s no safety net
To catch the weak and the helpless
In the land of the Niger and the Benue.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 