HOPE TO BE FOUND

Line your pockets with seeds of hope
Find purpose when you secretly grope
through your hidden emotions, touch
one, touch all, no emotion is too much,
no matter how intense. The deeper
the grip, the closer it is to the reaper -
And you are the reaper of what you sow.
Empty your pockets of what you know
As you walk the road leave a flower trail
The Grail finds you if you seek the Grail.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

DUSKY

The wooded streets
heavy laden with evening tears
The dusk is wet with wanting
well within her weathered years
where everything longing meets
maturity already wears
with a battered beauty so haunting
for the bruises it softly bears.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

NO MATTER

No matter
How many times I get used,
I still can never get used
To getting used.

No matter how often
Fake people take a liking
To me, I never take a liking
To their liking.

No matter
How often I be in love,
I will never fall in love
While standing in love.

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

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

Poems from the inner river

TAKE YOUR PAIN

Take your pain
Don’t run from it
Again and again
Welcome it
You will gain
From the purge
And after the rain
A new you will emerge.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

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

Landing in Barcelona

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

GENTLY TREAD

Just because I‘m alive doesn‘t mean I‘m not dead
Just because I‘m talking doesn’t mean anything has been said
Just because I‘m lost doesn’t mean I‘m not being led

You might still be hungry, even after you‘ve been fed,
when you’ve been fed stones instead of bread

Those who heal wounds today, have also once bled.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

SELF-CONFIDENCE

Confidence.
The beginning and the end
Of Fulfilment.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije