LITTLE STEPS

Healing takes place in small steps;
Pause and breathe a little, it helps.
Be thankful for the experience to grow,
There is still so much you don’t yet know.

Wise words don’t stop the pain, I know;
Hang in there, son, just go with the flow.
Things that don’t want to stay, let them go –
Accept that the absence of yes truly is no.

And look how far you’ve come,
See how different and clear you’ve become.
The thing that kills one part of you,
Awakens and strengthens the new you too.

But when you eventually get up and go,
Don’t look back, son, shut that window.
Little drops a mighty ocean do make;
Little steps you a long way shall take.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

VANISHING

Don’t come back after I’ve got used to your absence
Your absence has become your strongest presence
If you return too late you’ll only find yourself gone
Replaced by memory, you’ll be the invisible one.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

BE WHO YOU ARE

It does not matter who your father is,
Or was. It only matters who you are;
Throw off the reputational burden of his
Life, whether a nobody, a crook or a star.

It does not matter who your mother is,
Was, or will be. You have your own destiny.
Be firm in rejecting her spirit’s liabilities,
Nor bask in her glory. Write your own story.

Never ever allow family to be your bondage.
If wealth is not health, detach and go higher.
The chains of name, blood, and heritage
Are human assumptions, not God’s desire.

God wants each unique creature to be true,
So experience and enrich the world as You.
Free your children too from the Obligation to
Follow, serve, help, complete or redeem you.

If your story happens to be your family’s too,
Then so be it, that’s who you genuinely are.
But if your story is totally different and new,
Don’t feel guilty; accept and be who you are.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

DON’T SURRENDER IT ALL TO AI

The primary aim of artistic expression is inner clarification of self, as well as personal spiritual development. The secondary aim is communication and sharing of ideas, which in any case always happens automatically as a by-product.

If you outsource all your artistic creativity to Artificial Intelligence, then, yes, finished works of a certain mould will be generated, but your spirit will not grow. And the purpose of your earthlife – the very purpose of life itself – will not be fulfilled. This lies alone in the continuous development of your “I” through self-exertion, self-clarification and the constant effort towards pure and accurate self-expression of intuition via thought into word and deed.

AI will produce works that resemble beauty, but will lead to the atrophy and death of the human spirit – unless you critically interrogate those works and then correct, reject or surmount them with your own personal effort, your own intuiting and reasoning. Don’t surrender to AI. Learn it but remain above it. Artificial Intelligence will make you look good, make you feel good, but only you can become better by yourself, by your own effort. The ancient rule is still the same, there is no short cut to success.

It is very imperative, in this era of artificial intelligence, for each person to remain personally creative, as well as spiritually and intellectually active and independent. Make the effort to think your own thoughts through to the end, and formulate and write them down by yourself. Compose, rehearse and record your own music. Make your own art. Draw the inspiration not just from others, but also, like before, from within the fathomless depths of your immortal spirit. Spend time in the silence of your heart, listening to your inner voice, hearing yourself by yourself and not from the programmed algorithm of an AI companion’s voice.

And also continue to do as many things with your hands as possible. Build. Make. Write. Go out into the world. Use your physical muscles, use your brain muscles, use your heart muscles, use your soul and use your spirit. And also, PATRONISE THOSE WHO DO SO, THOSE WHO STILL PRODUCE BY THE EFFORT OF HUMAN CREATIVITY. When you do this, you are not doing them a favour, but you are doing yourself and humanity and our future a SERVICE!

This is the only way they will grow. This is the only way we will grow. This is how we survived as a species over millions of years. This is how we got here. By the agency of Natural personal Human Intelligence. WE have always been the ones evolving, the ones plumbing our own depths, the ones developing. Thus: Woe betide us today if we now, tempted by convenience, hand that task now over to a self-programming and self-learning artificial algorithm we fashioned. Like the Zauberlehrling who can no longer deactivate or control the witchcraft he awakened. We would thereby have marked the beginning of the end of the story of the human spirit on Earth.

We are the generation that must tame the beast we have created, and ensure that it remains a servant and never becomes the cold lifeless master of our destiny, literally and figuratively. AI is wonderful for sourcing and collating information, and sorting and delivering it coherently. It is also marvellous at generating alternative versions of expressive output. But it cannot see the light. It cannot produce that individual unique recognition that can only come from deep within you. And it cannot produce the NEW, a truly new and different future. It can only regurgitate and re-permutate the past.

The production of Newness is still the purview and the task of the living and active human spirit. Let AI not be our last invention. Let us continue to bestir ourselves to intuit, imagine, innovate and invent even greater creations in the future, greater and higher than AI, and which also come from us – or through us. For WE are human spirit.

Retain your primary art-form in your hands. Don’t outsource it in the name of comfort, or vanity, or convenience, or competition, or materialism. Save and continue to develop that which is most valuable to us – our spirit. Let art, intuition and inspired thinking continue to be tools for personal inner growth through the joy of effort.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

THE JOURNEY OF YOUR “I”

The miracle of life transcends the earth.
The adventures of the “I”
Survive many an earthly death and rebirth
And a “Beyond” not in the Sky
But right here beside you
And much too often beneath you.
Your Journey is shaping the Real you.

This is really the purpose of it all -
Not the Earthly but the Spiritual,
the true inner personality,
you the actual person, you, you, you!
Eternity requires integrity,
and self-conquest is our path thereto
in the struggle with the Material.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WRONG IS SOMETIMES RIGHT

The right one will come
When your education is done.
Until then every wrong one
Is the right one so you can become
The right one
When your transformation
Is done.

Wrong is sometimes right
Because it’s what you need right now
Some people’s day is the night
That’s when they can work and plough
Blindness strengthens inner sight
You intuit your way through things somehow
And a bark is just as useful as a bite.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

MOVE!

Move! You have to move!
Always you have to move move move!
Change change change! Move
And move again and again
Keep moving keep changing your lane
Joy and pain sunshine and rain playing and praying
And always adjusting and recalibrating
And moving and moving and moving
And constantly growing and improving.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

GREETINGS ALONG THE WAY

Every flight is a flight of fantasy
Every journey is a journey of discovery
Every departure is a departure from routine
Every arrival is an arrival somewhere in between

Every stranger is of a stranger kind
Every meeting is a meeting of minds
Every parting is a parting of the Red Sea
Every greeting is…

Wait! Greetings. The greetings
Are the closest we’ll come to most humans.
Put into them the earnestness of meetings -
They are often our sole communions.

With eyes, with words, with gestures,
With a handshake or an embrace -
Greetings in all their textures
Help us to feel our human race.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

GO YOUR WAY

Don‘t take everything
That comes your way
For the way has everything

The way will make you lose your way
If you believe everything
And take everything
That the way brings your way

Learn to look away
From the way
When the way
Is not going your way

Know the way
And know your way
And know the difference.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

HELP COMES

Things that long seemed impossible
Manifest suddenly just before the window
Of opportunity closes. Many a miracle
Is undramatic, almost mundane, a narrow
Dirt track fit for walking or at best a bicycle
running beside a highway leading to hollow
Shallow goals for the spiritually superficial
And there right next to it, quiet and mellow
This simple path opens up with no noticeable
Features except this: it is your heart’s echo
Returning long after you sent an inaudible
Piercing cry for help. Swing chariot, swing low,
Swooping down out of the blue Inconceivable
And carrying me home to a better tomorrow.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river