You are afraid of a flower
She smiled sadly at me
My bosom blossoms for you
My thorns, they prick, I know
But love hurts the lover
And love hurts the loved
And I’m dying, I’m dying for you
Lie down in my grave with me
Let’s be reborn together.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Daily my heart weeps
My soul is drenched in a river
Flowing with thoughts of you
Of late I have become
A fisherman
Richly rewarded for my toil
Bravely diving into the lake of love
Daily my heart weeps
With joy.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
I can’t sleep
Nor can I weep
If sadness were a grey cloud
I am the bottomless lake from which it arose
I miss your laughter, your mirth
Like dawn misses a birdsong
On a cold concrete city street
Before it fades away
Each time I burn pain into you
I burn pain into me; but if I
Were to not bite and hurt you so deeply
How would you continue to think of me?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Life is a vineyard
I’m thinking of wine, you know wine?
Internalise life in little sips
Don’t rush me, don’t rush you
Life even then is strong enough.
Life is a graveyard
You pass it by, reluctant to look in
It scares you
Littered with the memories of the reflection
Of your certain destiny
It brings you into deepest reflection
Most sober. Life, you scare me to death.
Before I die I want to love somebody
I need to love somebody
I cannot just come and go like that
I want to love somebody with all my heart
With all my heart
At least once in my life.
And then I loved somebody and it
Was still not enough. And then I knew:
Before I die, I need to believe in something
And fight for something and live
For something more important to me
Than my own self. To be myself is
To become selfless.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I want the lines of your palms
Written in my diary
My future lives
As though they were already past
My days numbered
My deeds counted
And when I scoop your two palms to my face
Inhale your peroxide breath
Exhale my soul, blue kiss
Your eyes, too round full moons
Have dawned on me with undisguised thoughts
Warning me:
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Caked by the moon’s blood
It was our virginal touch
I thought of you
As a wolf howling for mystery
As we silently
Touched without a sigh
All I remember is the look
In your observant eyes
Muddied
By the moon’s blood
No rain could
Wash it away.
Dance, ye shivering droplets
Our skin is voyeur
Our dance is romance
Immortalise our first kiss.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
She named me River
Because I whet her lowlands
In the hour of her drought
– I saw a palm tree
Hotly pursued by a multitude
Waving palms
But I did not understand
The power from which they sprung
Forth – must I understand?
Which sane river stops to understand itself?
Waters may rise to clouds to fall back as rain
But what woman rises from her heart to her head
To peer back down into her heart from her head
To understand herself
Without losing the misty way back to the dawn?
For she is mysterious yes it is complicated
As simple as a riddle
The flowing is the being, picture-perfect
It is frozen
Faster! Faster! Faster!
Breathlessly I never tire
The day she catches me
Is the day
She will lose her desire for me. For
She calls me River.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
They say twisted minds don’t believe
When the way is straight
They draw back suspiciously and
Wait for wile and guile, to smile
The stiff alarm I ignored you
New you were lying, but still old you close
Paperminting fresh notes, suckers
That will get laid but won’t get paid
Flesh throaters singing of tribulation
I love to whip your twisted mind
Tongue lashes, reams of read streams
Streaks you shriek! Dream lines of silence scream.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Those days were magic
I was a boy but already a man
You were a woman but still a girl
We understood each other.
No matter how much they dig into our past
They’ll never really understand it today
You cannot understand a fairytale
With your intellect.
You have to be a child at heart
To understand magical love…
There is a grove
therein a cove
therein a light
therein a dove
therein a mystery.
Memory becomes an elixir.
Our hearts were broken
By the logic of separation
Perfection had to be
Enshrined
For future reference.
The sanctuary of blueprint
Guard it, a secret. A desecrated deity
Cannot be appeased by sacrifice.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Love affairs
Whirlwind
Across the desert of loneliness…
Reassuring me that I live.
I’m grateful for every ripe watermelon,
Every mango, every grapefruit, every tangerine,
Every kiwi, pawpaw, and orange, every peach,
Ụdara, every ube, every mmịmị,
Every plum, every berry, Cherry, each date,
Every passionfruit that ever whet my appetite
Suckled on the fingers of my thirst
Stilled my restlessness.
Yet after the storm
Came always the quiet morning
Free of desire,
Full of my heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 