Of Desire

BEFORE I DIE

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

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.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING?

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

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.

KISSING IN THE RAIN

~ Che ~ 4 Comments

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.

JUST BEING I

~ Che ~ 4 Comments

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

PAPERMINT

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

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

MEMORY OF TRUE LOVE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

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

RENEWALS

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

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

LOVE AFFAIR

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

When I tasted the spliff
Dragged it down to the level
Of my hungry black lips
It was a temptation it could not resist

Heavenwards it soared
With me, its quivering
Stub, on its mind
Where I met higher thoughts.

Write down
Your poems at the height
Of your madness
For after you return

You will not remember anymore
What thoughts those were
That came to you so naturally
When you were high in love.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

ODE TO POETRY

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been biting like a volcano
Poetry has been crying lava
I’ve been biting hard

Stop! Stop bleeding me! Stop breaking me!
I want your nipple
Your lip, your ruthless restless tongue

Your thigh
And above it, your most tender secret
I want to reveal it, stop starving me.

The eruption was a corruption
Of merciful silence.
You should never have woken me up.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
amazon cover copy palm lines 2015

BLUE SECRET RIVERS

~ Che ~ 5 Comments

My blood is blue river today
Every thought of you beknights me
Makes me feel like royalty
For thou art my queen…

If I strode across mountains
They would prostrate before my will
Proud to be footstool
To the queen’s lover

Naughty me
What a delicious secret
I feel like King Aka the Thirst
For I secretly drink from the queen’s fountains

My blood is blue river today
When it runs into you
You sigh…
At night I am thine king.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije