THE POND

Your voice is in my heart
Although we’re farther apart
Than a mind can see, can scan,
Hearts with ease infinity will span
Between Earthlives and Beyond
Across universes spirits bond
Like lily leaves on a little pond.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE STRANGE CHANGE

When the person you knew
disappears and is no more
than memories and pictures
and daily through the door
a stranger now in and out walks
while in the old voice of before
this stranger also with you talks
welcome to disorientation shore.

People really change,
it is no myth -
Experience totally today
the person you’re now with -
No human truly stays
a monolith.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

YOU ARE THE ONE I‘M THINKING OF

The light goes on and off
like a shivering bulb in a cold room
Your heart is not enough
to beat back the nocturnal bloom
Dawn, the dusk is tough
the mother of both glow and gloom
Lover, your mouth is rough
when you kiss at night you don’t know whom
Shadows long call your bluff
but your birdsong cries out mushroom
I’m you’re d’healer I’ve got the good stuff
sweeping you off your feet like your bride broom
Yes, you are the one I’m thinking of
When the new moon starts to wax and loom.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE FORGOTTEN YOU

How could I forget you?
And forget that I forgot you?
Even this I forgot.

Forgot your face
Forget your eyes
Forgot your ways
Forgot our ties
Forgot the words we spoke in the night
Forgot the cadence of your voice’s delight
Forgot your touch, so deep, so light

I did not even remember you as a dream
You just were never there it would seem
Memory is a fast-flowing vanishing stream.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

IN YOUR WORLD

In your world I’m weird
I write poems everyday
Money to me is not wealth
Politics is an illusion they play
Religions are superficial
God is different from what they say
Intimacy is often artificial
Your way is not my way
I don’t attach, I don’t detach
I seem to neither go nor stay
And yet somehow I still touch
You much deeper than they.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

SEX IS SECONDARY

Sex is secondary
Mission is primary
It is not who shares your bed
but who shares your path you should wed
Or you’ll suffer the aftermath.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

DISTANCE HAPPILY

Family finally -
Friendship verily -
Distance happily -
Thought is vicinity
Feeling is duplicity
Emotion is complicity
Intuition is veracity.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

NO HOLDING BACK

Do your poem
Like you do your woman
Like you do your man

Strong and Tender
Deep and Intense
Lovingly dismember
In the present tense

No holding back
Do your poem
Like you do them
That love you back.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

DRIFTED APART

The truth must not only be true
But it must also appear to be true -
Or it will look like a lie.

You must not only be you
But you must also act like you
Or you will feel like a lie.

A small shift
A big rift
Swift

A brief lift
A Greek gift
Drift.

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