You need to speak your mind Or you will not be free It will eat you up inside and grind Away at your sanity. Say what you really believe Articulate what you really want Your Inner piece shall grant you reprieve When people’s reaction be blunt. Truth is better than art Honesty shines brighter than beauty Your inner voice wants to chart A path to peace of mind and to Liberty. Speak your mind before you die. If your heart moves your mind spiritually Speak your mind unless you’ll die Literally and figuratively. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
Of Leadership
DON’T BE DISTRACTED BY INSULTS
Be ready to forgive insults Even before they come Knowing they will come From children and adults Who are a part of your way For this too is a part of the way You must travel to get results. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
IT TAKES A NEIGHBOURHOOD
I like them both The two sides of Black The one that is woke And the one that looks back I like both of them The two sides of Black The one full of flame And the one that’s laid back I like the Black that plays I like the Black that fights I like the Black that prays I like the Black that delights I like the Black that segregates I like the Black that integrates I like the Black that separates I like the Black that tolerates It’s all Black and it’s all good It takes a village and a neighbourhood. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
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
USING SELF-CONFIDENCE
The most powerful thing you can give people is confidence. Self-confidence. But some people, once they have it they turn around and use it against you, who awakened it in them.
Next time, you feel like leaving people wallowing in their pitiful inferiority complex.
But a part of you still goes ahead and keeps on strengthening people who need it everywhere you meet them. What they later do with this strength and self-confidence is their business.
You have done yours.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
SELF-CONFIDENCE
Confidence.
The beginning and the end
Of Fulfilment.
– 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)
FORTIFYING THE BASE
We might not inspire the heart
Behind every new pair of curious eyes
To new thoughts or new resolutions
But we can reinforce ourselves
In that which we already know and do
And that is as good a reason
As any other
To write into the book of life.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
PRUDENCE
Discretion and guardianship of the tongue are the measure of a man‘s inner strength and level of maturity and, ultimately, worth.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
VULNERABILITY
Waking up
Feeling like a wound
And for a second you don’t cover up your vulnerability
Because the world is still asleep
And no-one is watching…
You lie there, your eyes closed
Your wound open
And let your life’s troubles tear at the wound
In your Heart…
And then,
Just when the pain becomes unbearable
You feel the calming weight of responsibility
Descend like balm and bandage upon you
You know your role again
You become strong.
And by the time you open your eyes and arise
The wound has been stitched up again
And you set forth to meet the world
Unperturbed
Resolved.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 