FORGET IT

How humility can guide you
To find yourself if you let it -
How anger can ride you 
To death if you won’t forget it -

Forget it, it’s done and gone,
Your pain is the healing kind -
When you lost her, you won
A deeper heart, a higher mind.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

BE HONEST WITH PEOPLE UPFRONT

Be honest with people upfront. Because they are giving you their all, hoping you will accept it and believing you are the one. If you know you are not available for them or they are not what you seek, don’t let them plant their garden in your backyard and enjoy their fruits for a while before brutally uprooting them when you’ve had enough, or when they now want to enter the house, or when the one or thing you really want shows up. You cause a deep pain in the universe and open a wound in their hearts that will bleed for lifetimes thereafter. Be honest with people upfront. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Don’t say things you don’t mean or that aren’t REALLY real. If it’s not what you really want or if you’re not really sure, say it truthfully, keep your distance or break it off at once. You will gain a friend, and respect, for life, down the line.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

THAT KIND OF LOVE

How can someone
Love someone so much?
Is it possible? Once upon
A time there was such.

And betrayal couldn’t make the love go away,
It only opened a wound that would forever stay
And questions yearning to find answers some day.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WHAT’S HIDDEN IN THE SOIL

How something so good
Can just suddenly spoil
You would be so surprised
What’s hidden in the soil.

How success and fulfilment
Can defy time and toil
You would be so mortified
What’s hidden in the soil.

How the hand that loved
Can suddenly recoil
You would be so horrified
What’s hidden in the soil.

The human heart is a garden,
A kitchen, a fertile soil
And strange things happen
When things come to the boil.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

FAKE

Dull ache

Mistake

Deep fake

Heartbreak.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

ASSUMPTION IS THE FILTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Realising you’ve been deceived
Is very hard to believe
Because it looked so real
How it made you feel
But that is the first rule of deception
It must never look like deception
When you look at a wolf clothed as a sheep
You don’t see a wolf clothed as a sheep
You see a sheep. Everything around you
Could be a cover created to confound you.
Our wishes, insecurities, vanities, memories,
Propensities - they all block our senses.
Assumption is the filter of consciousness.
Worse, presumption. Everything is a dress,
And who or what is wearing each dress
You will learn by experience as you progress.
But as you become more knowledgeable
You ironically also become more gullible.
You are stunned, as you learn and grow,
To realise there’s still so much you don’t know.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

SMILE

Did you know that
Smiling makes you happy
When you’re feeling crappy?
Did you know that?

I bet you’re smiling now.
And if you were feeling crappy,
Now you’re feeling a little happy -
I bet you’re smiling now.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE DAY THE LAUGHTER CAME AGAIN

The day the laughter came again
I stood in shock and stared at it in awe
Like a stranger from a distant terrain
For I had forgotten to a tragic flaw
How laughter sounds and makes you feel.
It felt so good it made me want to cry;
The power of laughter and joy is real -
A heart that laughs purely will never die.

The day the laughter came again
I was at the lowest ebb of my life,
My soul wracked every day by pain,
Torn by questions and unresolved strife,
I woke up that morning and prayed to God,
then set out to bravely meet the day
And as I, work-focused, did onward plod,
Laughter came to me again along my way.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

UNTIL IT HAPPENS

You think it matters
Until it happens
And then you realise
It doesn’t really matter

You think it kills
Until it happens
And then you realise
It only hurts for a while
And then it disappears.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

PRE-DAWN

The light is gone from my heart
And gone from my life
And cut out my most sensitive part
With a dark burning knife

But I don’t care, because underneath
The heavy mountain of pain
A greater flame bursts from its sheath
And lights up my heart again.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river