UNCONTROLLABLE LOVE

If you can control love
Then you’ve never felt love

Love is stronger than the human spirit
The transformation of the soul, love did it

Love will waylay you
and disobey you
Love will take you and make you
and break you and remake you
in its own image.

And knows better than you
What it wants to go with you
Presage.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

NO OTHERS

I stopped wanting others
After I met you -
And I still don’t want any others
Even after I’ve lost you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE BEST YOU

To love is to trust
Because love is the most
vulnerable feeling on earth

To trust is to respect
Because trust is the purest
compliment that has worth

To respect is to obligate
Because respect indicates
expectation of highest virtue

To love is to trust
is to respect is to obligate
you to be the best you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

PEOPLE SAY ALL SORTS

When people insist
I love you more
Put them to the test
They won’t love you anymore

When people claim
I don’t love you anymore
Treat them the same
They’ll love you once more

Don’t base everything
On just what people say
People will say anything
Just to get through another day

Everybody wants happiness
But not everyone really knows
How to get that happiness -
We’re all searching and it shows.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

HUSH

The red rush
Autumn is on the thrush
Mush mush
And a flush of lush
You are more than a crush
- Hush.
I can’t brush you aside. 
I lied.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Poems from the inner river

GIVING TIME AND SPACE

When someone asks for time and space
Give it to them
They are not necessarily running away from you
They might really just need time and space
To come to terms with the fact of you.

And if they are running away from you
Then there’s no need to want them close to you.
It’s not an insult or an attack
It’s just a chance to find true happiness for both of you
Each in their own way, own time and own space.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

HUNGRY FOR HUMAN LOVE

The world is a buffet
All you can meet
Humanity at the venue
All you can greet
Kindness on the menu
All you can treat
Love and pain the entree
All you can eat.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

FORGET ME NOT

That deep moment
When the grass is calm
The gale is spent
Nature is bent
On being your heart’s balm

A busy butterfly
Like a restless thought
Flutters by
Waving hi and goodbye
Forget me not

Forget me not.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THAT ONE

You can come as close to me as you want
You still cannot get in.
You can go as deep into me as you want
But still deep within
My heart there is a door
And if you’re not the one it’s meant for
You can’t get in.

You can go as far away from me as possible
You still remain inside me
I can push you as far away from me as possible
But still deep inside me
There is one tender space
And you alone live inside this place
That is the home in me.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

CACOPHONY OF ABSENCE

There is a cacophony of crowd
That is calming to the soul
Happy humanity buoyantly loud
Making its empty parts whole

When lungs are full of hearts
And hearts are crowded with mirth
And mirth is the song that charts
The path that longed for our birth

But even in the loudest throng
I hear your silence echoing
A dull throbbing of something wrong
The wind of strange bellowing

And where the multitudes gather
There I see your absence clearly
In the throes of the happiest banter
I quietly miss you dearly.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river