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

WALKING WOUNDS

We are all walking wounds
Chimeras and Illusions trigger us
And then we fall into a deep hole
Lashing out at shadows that don‘t exist
And hurting real people who never hurt us
And who don’t know why we‘re hurting them
Inside them where they walk their own wounds.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

EAGLE AT HEART

Landing in Barcelona

Sun-burnished
The sea slit
The morning lit up
Furnished my wit
The varnished mirror beneath me crawls
And over-yonder my sun it calls
Back tarnished memory bit by bit.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

YOU AND YOUR STRENGTH

When I was younger
My strength was stronger
Than I was
And it made me do what it wanted
And made me undaunted.

Now that I am older
I have become bolder
Than my strength
And I make it do what I want
On every other battlefront.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

ALERTNESS

Be present
In the moment
Or when your moment comes
You will be absent
In 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

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LIGHTRISE

When more than the sun rises
And more than the moon is full
When enlightenment itself materialises
Upon and within your soul

When you awaken in the deepest sense
And the light of your spirit fills your eyes
Then shall you experience
The dawn of the morning Lightrise.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

BOYS TO MEN

The older I get,
The more I miss my father.
The more knowing I grow,
The more I miss him.
The more I know him.
The more I understand him.
We live life forwards,
But understand life backwards.
When it‘s too late to change anything,
That’s when we understand everything.
The young shall grow.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
(I just feel like remembering today)

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

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NO MATTER WHAT

What if Rosa Parks had got up from her seat?
What if Churchill had agreed to negotiate with Hitler?
Sometimes even when you are down
Still you must refuse to bow down.

What if Dundee had not pushed out Clay in Round 5 against Liston?
What if Ali had kept his belt and gone to Vietnam?
Sometimes you have to face your opponent blindfolded, because that moment is your destiny and you just have to fight on.

To resist evil, no matter what
To do the right thing, no matter what
To stand to your conviction, no matter what
To keep on fighting, no matter what

A thousand years are as one day
And the way seems to last forever
Sometimes, like now, I feel so strange to myself
As if I were someone else
Somewhere else far far away
Awakening inside me
And, even though I don’t understand it
I just have to let it continue
To take over me,
No matter what.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.