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 Liberation
YOU MUST BE PATIENT
There will be hope But the heart must cope First with a season Of conflict sans reason This moon is long faced And tied to a dead sea Rolling scrolls misplaced By startled history. You must be patient Time is clairaudient It hears your heart beating And your footfalls repeating The dance to victory. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
YOUR STRENGTH
When they hit The reason why it doesn’t hurt is not because it’s soft but because you’re tough to the core. Laugh the loudest When they hit you the hardest Stand the proudest When you face their mockery test Your strength won’t bring you victory Your strength IS your victory. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
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
THE THOUGHTS THAT ATTACH
I‘m looking for the pain I can’t find it in all its usual hiding places I go inside, check again the box of fears, the memory full spaces But I can’t find the rain. Letting go of the thoughts that attach Not every perfect catch is a perfect match I cannot find the pain. 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
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
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 