Sex is secondary Mission is primary It is not who shares your bed but who shares your path you should wed Or you’ll suffer the aftermath. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Of Journeying
NO HOME AWAY
I walk through the valley of pain on my own
By the time friends come I’m already gone
I am All the colours between black and brown
Call me Africa or call me Diaspora, a birded song
Fly without perching, there’s no home away from home.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
LIKE A FLOWER THINKS OF THE SUN
Think of forgiveness Like a flower thinks of the sun With gratitude nonetheless For a story time once upon For pain is the power to bless Forevermore for if ever done Let anguish be my shorn redress Torn away, for Done! is foregone Revenge and mercy both make a mess But mercy makes the earthier one. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
EMERGING
The more my eyes fail
The better I see
The more my knees flail
The faster I flee
And the farther I go
I thought younger was stronger
But that was a long long time ago.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
EAGLE AT HEART
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
PLANE OVER CLOUD VALLEYS
Clouds nestling between the
dark craggy mountains,
sitting in the valleys like velvet cushions –
Silent solemn sentinels rising upwards,
peaks to greet these metal intrusions –
I wonder if they think we are just fleeting illusions.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
ONCE WE WERE LIGHT
Once we were light
But the world weighed us down
Drowned out our cry of resistance
And put a bandage over our eyes
A desperate cry for help
Before we fell silent
And started to look silently at our children
The way once our parents looked at us
Now we know what they were thinking:
Retain your magic! Retain your lightness!
Even as they said to us worriedly:
You have to learn to fit into the system –
Knowing it was not the way
But knowing no other way
Or knowing it but not having the heart
To push us off the cliff –
Because not everybody grows wings
When falling through the gap.
The generation gap.
Now we watch our children worriedly
Wanting them to become like us
And wanting them to stay themselves too.
Once we were light
But the world weighed us down.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
RELAY
If every new generation
Rose up twice as high as the one before,
Humanity‘s elevation
Would see us soon knocking on heaven‘s door.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
MEMORYLESS TRAVEL
You have to get there to remember.
On the way there you will forget
Where you are going to
And why.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
POEMS DON‘T CHANGE
Places change people
People change places
Places change people
People change places
Races change people
People change races
Races change people
People change races
Faces change people
People change faces
Faces change people
People change faces
The person who started this poem
Is not the person who finished it.
Poems change people –
But people don‘t change poems.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 