The ice
Spice of my life
Has thawed
Underneath my paw.
As I claw myself back to life
All I need from you
Is a splice
Of sacrifice.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Of Nature and Natural Laws
DEATH THREAT
Wanted!
Dead or alive
Hunted!
Run for your lives
Haunted!
The earth is a house of mirror
The hammer of horror
One in four mammals under threat
That was a death sentence
Crouching in the park
Lunging out of the dark
Four in four mammals under pressure
Self-preservation
Undaunted!
– che chidi chukwumerije.
IT’S A PLANET
It’s a planet
Because it’s all about
The plant
Each and every one of them
The way life planned it
So what’s our plan now?
Bring back the plant to planet man
Solution in resolution
A planet in a plan
Universe in verse – reversed.
The planet lungs to breathe again
Plants expiring on planet man
The screen is green
Reality ours to imagine and make
Plant a good seed
Breathe out
Greenscene is backdrop
Every drop will wrench your thirst
Drop back
Because it’s melting
It’s a planet
We did not plan it
And yet we dammed it
But it’s all about the plant
If it’s a good seed, plant it.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
PLANE WINDOWS
We’re walking on air
It’s a carpet of sometimes white
Sometimes grey and fair
Domed by azure blue and bright
Cushion of cloud.
Creation, I’m sure, is proud
Of its laws, perfect and very (extra) ordinary
Treasures for all who seek and invent
Awe-inspiring, comforting, scary
They make us small and silent.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
LEAVING
There was a girl
the fruit of her labour
Was the world
With a cry of pain and a shout of joy
She gave birth to the world
And primitive was the world
Harsh the lips that burned her nipples
Rough the tongue that broke her word
And we’re still here today
The earth is still not enough
Mother has become a stranger
The outcasts have grasped their destiny.
-Che Chidi Chukwumerije..
THOSE THOUGHTS DON’T DISAPPEAR
Those thoughts don’t disappear
They keep living somewhere
In you… in me… in someone far away
From here…
Those thoughts don’t disappear
They keep working somewhere
In your world… in my world… or in a far away world
You don’t see and you don’t hear…
Oh, those quiet thoughts
That you’re thinking
Somebody’s picking
Round and round it goes, nothing’s new
And nothing’s hidden and nothing’s lost
Reap the sower must
Those thoughts, they don’t just disappear
They keep on growing somewhere
And one day… when you least expect it…
Oh oh oh, they’re back again in your life
Oh oh oh, they’re back again with their maker.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
LAKE SPIRIT
My heart weeps, a baby
Another mountain stream
Seeking a lake
After which it longs, a Lover
Longing for completion
During the course of a life-long journey
Into the eternal sea.
My heart cries for that presence
That was his quiet audience
On a walk across a Valley
In a Cumbrian mystery –
Spirit, I know you can move
Through time and space. Find me, do,
Meet me, be with me, deeply,
No matter where I wander
Or rest my head at night – stay close, meander
Like a melody in my Soul…
I’ve run out of control
Searching for my Goal.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
BREATHE EARTH
The Green House
The Green Out-house
The Green Backyard
The Green Yard back –
Green green green
Green in the wind
A better world.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
GIVE
The red cloud o’er the mountain is top
Beneath is white and the mountain-cap
A bird sings just one single note
O’er and o’er by rote:
To give is to get is to give is to get
O’er and o’er and o’er again
To give is to get is to give is to get
Sans chorus and sans refrain.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
BOATRIDE ON ULLSWATER
A life I’ve lived before?
Or just a summer lore?
These Cumbrian hills that float past me
Fade away, misty, like a memory
If greens could speak of all they hold
Unbroken sap, unspoken, old
Unwoken, untapped, a silent audience
Events absorbed in quiet clairaudience
What tales untold of eras lost
Would now unfold, unthawed of frost
Unbound by dust; behold, forever green
The mist has parted as though it had never been
Ullswater, whose water first watered your past
Whose feet were those that were the last
To tread that dry ground that is now your wet floor
Before that time vanished foreverevermore?
The boatride, like a gentle slide, into a strange intuition
A short sad season of startling fruition
Goodbye again, Watervalley, deep within your heart
Remember still my footsteps, there they did start
Mist and misty, mistier than thought
Misty mysteries yet they are not.
A heart is a storehouse of long forgotten memories
That sometimes arise cloaked as imagined stories
What do I have more precious than my heart,
My past’s library, my future’s chart.
Silently we walk, simple human beings
Yet mightier each than the sum of all worldly things.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
(One of my Lake District poems)
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 