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

BADLY

I‘m hurting so badly
It’s driving me mad
And making me sad
I’ll take the bend gladly.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

YESTERDAY’S FLOWERS

My memories, are they mine?
Whose Definitions do definitions define?
How many sides has a line?
Grape juice is drunk, but not on wine.
My memories, are they mine?

They are my memories of you,
So what are they? If I asked you
Then I‘d be asking the you of today –
I’d much rather ask the you of yesterday,
The you in my memories of you.

But is that, or was that ever, the real you
Or is it just my memory of you?
My memories of you, are they yours?
Or are they mine? Or are they ours?
Yesterday’s flowers bloom on in me and you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

BOYS TO MEN

The older I get,
The more I miss my father.
The more knowing I grow,
The more I miss him.
The more I know him.
The more I understand him.
We live life forwards,
But understand life backwards.
When it‘s too late to change anything,
That’s when we understand everything.
The young shall grow.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
(I just feel like remembering today)