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
Of Liberation
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
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)
MOCKERY THEIR WEAPON
Once they used chains
Once they used Whips
Once they used Dogs
Once they used knives and guns
Now they use mockery
Because they have seen that all those things
Did not provide a final solution
To the verdure of your tenacious Proliferation
For you sprout from within
They will weight the System against you
But it will not hold you down completely
Yet it will mock you
They will twist the law against you
But it will not hold you down completely
Yet it will mock you
Mock you and ridicule you and make you small they will
Because as long as you are small
You cannot build, or run, a big House.
It’s not your body they want to kill
It is your Spirit.
Do not believe the hype,
Racism is still alive and well.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
FREE MARKET
So why is it that
Only one person is buying
And only one person is selling…
Only one person is making
And only one person is slaving
Only one person is thinking
And only one person is sleepwalking
If the market is free
Why does Africa chain itself
Down? If you don’t make anything
You’ll never own a thing
A free market is not enough to
Free a continent –
Only a free mind can
And free thinkers
Who have freed themselves from
Unimagination and rigidity and
Small parochial selfishness.
Only such can free their People
From the chains of a free market
Where might is still right
And freedom is not given for free.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
VARIETY
I don’t make Afro-pop
Or naija-hiphop
Everything I do is
Alternative
Oil is not the only source
Of Revenue.
Nigeria, diversify
Tap your other talents
Build planes
Phones triggered by thought
Find a unique solution
To the problem of soil Erosion
Restless creativity
Is the mirror altar of the Higher God
Don’t run from yourself
Be a native of your Inner voice
Celebrate the different bird
Celebrate the alternative curious thought
Celebrate the bold Spirit of adventure
Make the celebration of diversity your art and culture
in perception, in Expression, in creation.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE GRACE
Though disgraced
I will not lose my face
I will raise it
that the sun
may shine on me.
Every fibre of my being
Every corner of my soul
Every song of my spirit
Will become new –
for the flames of the sun
have killed me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
STRIVING
I strive
Therefore I am
I am not
Therefore I strive
Striving is the beginning
And striving is the end
And when the end is over
And I am over with striving
I shall ascend
A smile on my lips
Because the end is the beginning
And the beginning is the end
So long as I am the made
And not the Maker
Besides “Dawn can never be reached
Save by the path of night”*
And there again I shall strive again
For striving is living is joy.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
(*Kahlil Gibran)
BUTTERFLY: BREAKING OUT OF A BROKEN HEART
It takes a long time
To forgive yourself
For not giving love back
To the person that gave it to you –
Nobody can break your heart
Only you can break your own heart
Nobody’s forgiveness can set you completely free
Until you yourself have broken out
Of your broken heart,
Like Butterly.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
IT IS WELL
When blood like a river
Attendeth my soul
When mirrors
Turn backwards and cold
Whatever my lot
Let the past work away
It is well, it is well
With my goal.
Out of hell, burning bell
Wring my soul, ring my soul
Though we fell, now ’tis well
With our goal.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
* inspired by Spafford’s 19th century eponymous hymn.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 