From one to the next bondage
One to the next stage of life
Strife follows on strife
As you age.
If joy was a seed
I hope you planted it
If life requested a good deed
I hope you granted it –
’Cause that’s all you’ll have
When you cross the grave.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
image: wilhei/pixabay
You reap what you sow
And pay back what you owe –
Just a little rhyme to remember
When you harvest the crops in September.
Never burn the bridge you’re travelling on
For it alone will lead you back to where you begun –
Just a little thought to ponder on
Wanderer, before you wake up and wander on.
Givers never lack
Takers never give back
Because they forever lack –
The newest face has on old old back
The global highway was once a little dirt track.
We reap what we sow
And pay back what we owe –
Just a little rhyme to remember
Brother, when you await the new year in December.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
(Image courtesy Pexels/Pixabay)
Nature shapes and nature forms
Humans, mountains, seasons, worms
Nature cools and nature warms
Hearts and loves, volcanoes and storms
But stretch out your hand to touch nature
And all you’ll touch are her dorms and norms
For nature herself is hidden from capture
And all we see are her shapes and forms.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There used to be a village quiet
One of many of the same childlike face
Faces of native fisherfolk
Of contentment in nature’s ancient cradle
A village on the river
Somewhere in the labyrinth of the Niger Delta
The songs they sang on their swaying boats
Put to sleep the fish in their nets’ embrace
Sweet was the voice of the water
Clear, her heart, clear, her mind
But, treacherous, the land bore a secret treasure
Deep within her precious heart
And they came, they came, thirsty
For the dark oily secret in her laps
And they drill, they drill, deeply, and spill
And until today they’re coming still
The village, it is no more
The river’s song is choked slowly to death
Crude and dark and slimy and viscous
The oil has smeared the water and defiled the land
But, unquenched, the flames of caustic lust
Still they burn, still they yearn
The bright acid fires that char our skin
Burn our throats too and poison deep our thoughts
Our colourful birds are burned into memory
Our fish, our beasts will be future-fossilized
There was a tree, it was the last of its kind
May nature preserve our footprints still formed
And the villagers now are refugees at home
Seeking other shores and other huts
Seeking rivers where they can again sing their songs
As they outcast their ancestral nets
And in their hearts they never forget
That once upon a not-so-distant time
They had a land, they had a river, that hid
A precious dark secret beneath its soft breast.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Arctic thirty
Arctic melting
The smell of oil
Well conflicting
A powerless crew
Against a powerful few
The wealth of the earth
Is in the human heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
What is night?
Who gave it eyes
To see my soul?
Who gave it ears
To hear my inner voice?
Who gave it the sense
To smell my fears?
What is night
After midnight?
Who gave it arms
To hold me?
Who gave it words
To answer
The questions in my soul.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Illustration “What Is Night?” by Swana van Schaardenburg.
The light that comes
Comes from within –
Sun, moon and stars
Are stars in your own inner film
Morning comes with distant murmurings
Trains and cars and birdsongs gurgling
Silence broken by the rain
And swallowed up in silence again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Nestle CEO: Water is not a human right, should be privatized.
Because I thirst
For Love and Trust
When we meet I know
That your heart will quench
My thirst to quench your thirst
First –
For it is human
And it is right
To quench with Light
The thirst for Light
And we feel it like Water
Rejuvenating, refreshing
Flowing through us and
Keeping us alive –
Life startd in water
Millions of millions of years ago –
How many remember that?
We are all mermaids and mermen,
For we came out of the seas…
Mother Earth is our second mother
The first was the Ocean – Mother Water.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
The story you told in the west
Is not identical
With the laughter you laughed in the north
Nor with the song you sang in the south
Nor with the thoughts you expressed in the east…
The language you spoke on the mountain
Is very different
From the tongue you mouthed in the valley
And from the violins you bowed through the woods
And the ballad you composed upon the blue-green meadows…
The roar you let out as you charged past us
Has a different meaning
From the groan the desert drew out of you;
And the whisper which you sighed in this grateful heart
Is not the same cry with which you flow into the sea.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
White men complain
Of losing their women
Black women complain
Of losing their men
White women complain
Of losing their men
Asian men complain
Of losing their women…
From race to race
Place to place
Everyone is sure
Everyone is impure
I guess we’re all lost
I guess we’re all found
I guess we’re all free
I guess we’re all bound
I guess we all complain
I guess we’re all afraid
I guess we all know
How best to get laid.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 