YOU MUST BE PATIENT

There will be hope
But the heart must cope
First with a season
Of conflict sans reason
This moon is long faced
And tied to a dead sea
Rolling scrolls misplaced
By startled history.

You must be patient
Time is clairaudient
It hears your heart beating
And your footfalls repeating
The dance to victory.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE RIVER IS RUNNING

The river is running
The river of blood
Swallowing up, drowning
The kwashiorkor road
A finger on a trigger
Is going to pull one day
Mushroom clouds bigger
Than any from yesterday.
The time has come again
To learn how to survive
And stand alone in your pain
If only you are left alive
Children torn from parents
Friends and families will scatter
In wars between governments
Of people who think they matter.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

AGE OF DAMAGE

This is a war that has been waiting to happen
They don’t love each other and never did
They are not forgiving each other deeds overlapping
Generations whose hatred they never hid

They send missiles to greet each other
The way you and I send words to one another
When we’re angry and pain does not bother
To differentiate between strangers and brothers

It is the age of damage
The stage of rage and carnage
Angry birds in an iron cage
Trapped in rampage.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

GOING SOLO

Once he doesn’t care anymore
All the beauty in the world becomes a bore
Every tender touch pinches a sore
Promises of true love sound like folklore.

He walks out forever through the door
He totally overturns what he is living for
When he has been wounded to the core
Every woman now seems to him to be a whore.

Fitting in with the act turns into a chore
He rips off the mask which once he wore
The mask his heartbreak from his heart tore
And breaks away from the naive days of yore.

An angel or a demon? Neither nor.
Be yourself or die trying? Either or.
Whatever else life may have in store
He’ll carve his own way now to heaven’s shore.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

WHAT DO YOI REALLY WANT?

Imagine if the only way God could save you

Was by letting you continue to search and to suffer –

Would you still continue to beg Him to save you?

Or would you ask the devil to make you an offer?

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

LIKE A FLOWER THINKS OF THE SUN

Think of forgiveness
Like a flower thinks of the sun
With gratitude nonetheless
For a story time once upon
For pain is the power to bless
Forevermore for if ever done
Let anguish be my shorn redress
Torn away, for Done! is foregone
Revenge and mercy both make a mess
But mercy makes the earthier one.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

TAKE YOUR PAIN

Take your pain
Don’t run from it
Again and again
Welcome it
You will gain
From the purge
And after the rain
A new you will emerge.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

CRAVINGS

When they‘re done with you
They hate you
For showing them their darker side
And showing them how much they love it.

Never talk to them in the open
Only in secret
That‘s when they love you
That‘s where they crave it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

LISTEN

Always hear the unsaid when people talk;
Perceive the noise in the silence.
See the hidden stumble in their walk;
Read the unwritten hope for peace
Even in their threats of violence.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

965FACB8-364F-42DA-9912-076C1EE47269

HUMAN HEART

Santa and Satan are spelled with the same letters.
I just noticed it, please don’t crucify me.
Just know there’s a thin line between the two.
Sometimes when you think you’re looking out through a window, you’re actually looking at a mirror.

Saw this picture and liked it.
Something is buried in your heart and it could be anything. It’s probably everything.
Some pains will stay forever – well, probably not forever. Until you change and forgive and let go. Or until you die, I mean really die. Even when you forget, still you feel the pain and don’t know why. And then you remember – but you still don’t know why you took that first wrong step into the future.

But when you look at the serpent well, sometimes it seems as if it’s rising up to strike or writhing in treachery and deception. And sometimes it feels as if it’s begging for help and crying for forgiveness and looking for redemption. But some unsuspecting fool will pass by and think they’re looking at a heart. But you know better. You know you’re looking at a warning.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

img_3577