LOVE AND PAIN

Why is there so much hurt in this world? Why is it hard for people to join hearts without causing each other pain? Why is pain an unavoidable component of love and of togetherness? Is the human spirit really incapable of honest, pure, harmonious, mature love?

The people that love you are the people you will hurt, and they are the people that will hurt you the deepest and the most. And yet you cannot stop loving and you cannot stop loving them. Nor they you.

Who has ever found happiness on earth without it being laced with anguish and spiked with periodic doses of lacerating pain? If you haven’t found this, then you’ve never felt love yet. Because you can never find the love without the pain.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

SWAN SONG

Always remember one thing
If it’s true love it can’t move on overnight
It has to close its ring
Heal its wound, acquire new insight
And make the heart a swan-song sing.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WITHOUT YOU

The people you expect to be there
Are farthest away when you need them near
The beautiful world is barren and bare
Without you. I need you here
To share with me my hope and fear
And marvel at the sunsets rare
And be my sunrise and midnight clear.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

NEVER

Liars will always lie -
That is their truth.
Winners will always try -
Without expecting ruth.
Lovers will always laugh and cry -
That’s the secret of their youth.
A giver is a river that’ll never run dry.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

ROSES OF GRACE

It’s only by the grace and power of God that we are able to forgive some people. But we are. For the sake of our own inner peace and soul health. We are. Because we want to. And we receive the help to do so. Help to be free of hatred, free of anger, free of bitterness and, eventually, free of hurting and pain.

Sometimes my emotions feel like flowers and today I am full of roses. Love is a strange medicine. It hurts when it heals, and it caresses and brings pleasure when it is actually causing damage. Don’t assume all is well simply because someone is smiling. When they’re crying is usually when they’re most honest and healthy and in the process of healing.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

YEAR OF ACHING

What a difference a year can make
Depending on the path you take
The pillars you shake
The bonds you break
The demons or the angels you wake
And the thirsts you slake.

For whose or for what’s sake?
For something real or for something fake?
Some say the heart is a lake
Beneath its surface there swims a snake
Your happiness is at stake
And yet all you seem to do is ache and ache.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE HEART’S INDEPENDNECE

Your Heart is an independent being,
Don’t mess with it or it will show you pepper.
All the wahala you think you’ve been seeing
Will be yam when it shows you real shege.
It will riot and refuse to obey you;
It will sing praise songs to your enemies;
It will believe things that are not true
And long for its own self-decided remedies.
It will turn into a wild unpredictable stranger
With its own rules and on its own mission;
It will rush forward and fear no danger,
Driven by its own incomprehensible Vision.
And when it hurts it will burn like hellfire;
And when it laughs, you feel you’re in paradise;
And when it loves it loves with fierce desire;
But if it dies, your urge to live also dies.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WHERE THE HEART BELONGS

Someone who doesn’t take you with both hands, willingly and eagerly and totally, that person is not your home, nor you theirs. No matter how much it hurts, tear yourself away from them and move on.

Wounds heal with time.

We live in two worlds simultaneously. The one world is politics and society, is work and recreation, is projects and ambitions and all kinds of responsibilities, is ideologies, and is even family too sometimes. This is the one world, in which we chase achievements.

But there is another world in which we also live. It is deeper, is more subtle, more intense, quieter, and often very invisible. It is the loves that come and go; the tears and longings that burn our hearts; the seldom laughter of genuine joy; the raw friendships; the secret passionate love affairs; the intimately guarded happy home; the given trust and the broken trust; it is the real us deep inside.

We live in these two worlds simultaneously. And then time passes, and we die. And our obituary is full of what we did in the one world. While all our memories from the other world depart with us quietly in our hearts. And in the hearts of those who shared it with us.

Wounds will heal with time. But, while you’re on that journey, don’t go to where your heart does not belong. Seek your happiness in being true to yourself, always.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

WORDS WORTH LITTLE

What are words worth
On this lonely earth?
Actions seem more honest
But they also lie the best.
You don’t know what to believe -
Even silence too can deceive.
Only what you intuitively perceive
Will in the end be your reprieve.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

GOOD FOR THE SAKE OF YOU

When you do the right thing, you’re doing it for yourself. Always remember that. And let that be your motivation, your reward and your joy. Because you have to live with yourself always, and there is nothing worse than living with someone you don’t respect, someone you don’t trust, someone you don’t like and someone who is not in sync with you. And that person is yourself.

You are your own home, your own paradise or hell, and your own purgatory too in whom you have to recognise, discipline, purify and transform yourself. You are all you have. Handle yourself with care and with thought, with integrity. Any lesson you would like to teach your children one day, or wish you taught your children once upon a time, teach that lesson to yourself today. Lessons of character. Regard yourself as your first and last and only true child. If that child dies, you die.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains