Of Contemporary Assessment

UNDER A SPELL

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

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

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

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

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

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

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

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)

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

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.

SOCIAL INSECURITY

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

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 

AGAINST POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS

~ Che

Political correctness
Has fallen out of favour

Racial correctness
Is the new In-thing
The new hypocrisy
The new incarnation of evil

All you clever cowards
Claiming it’s time to be politically Incorrect
You have simply replaced one evil
With another –
Racial correctness
Cultural correctness
Religious correctness
Narrow-hearted correctness

That’s what brings in the Votes now.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

INTELLECT

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

Much praised –
Who raised
You up?

And what do you really see?
What do you know?

Where Intuition sees
A thousand lies
Intellect has the tools
To fashion them into one
Uncomfortable hard truth.

Verily, some hearts
Have no mouths
And some mouths
Have no heart.

– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.

JUST DO SOMETHING NEW

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Kingdom of oil and salt
Swishing tales swipe the sand
Behind vanishing storytellers, nay, dreampreachers

With high-sounding verses
They promised us a great future
Where are they now?

Where are they now, to see us
Reaping locusts and riffling through
Sheaves of worrisome mirrors

For, how closely the future mirrors the past!
Eyeballs hypnosis of rearview mirrors
Nobody driving the car forward.

Too much salt!
Do you hear my tongue burning
A song of sadness into your ears?

Too much heat! To look back
While walking forward is folly
New generation, is folly.

New generation. This name mocks you
Like it mocked before your time
Every generation that came and left.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.