How can someone Love someone so much? Is it possible? Once upon A time there was such. And betrayal couldn’t make the love go away, It only opened a wound that would forever stay And questions yearning to find answers some day. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
Of Relationships
TRUST IS THE MESSAGE OF TRUTH
One thing I know about life: you tell the truth to the person you truly love, to your soulmate. You feel enough trust and empathy, and you have the strong craving, to share the truth, the real naked truth, with them. People who are not able to tell you the truth are telling you that they don’t really have a deep place for you in their heart. This is a painful recognition to have, but a necessary one too. It helps you to protect yourself from deeper hurt and from new hurt in the future.
Trust is the message of Truth. As long as truthfulness is not coming from helplessness and desperation, then it is on the one hand a sign of respect, and on the other hand it is the ultimate admission of safety, intimacy and trust. You know the people you trust by the secrets you feel comfortable sharing with them. And you know the people who don’t trust you by the secrets they hold back from you. These are the people who are not close to you, no matter how close to you they seem to be. Veracity is the test – and the taste – of intimacy.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains
SAME DIFFERENCE
A marriage should not be based on emotions and karmic threads, but on spiritual homogeneity. If you are a truth seeker, then your partner must be a truth seeker too. If you have a certain conviction or recognition about how life really is and should be lived, then your partner must share a similar recognition or consciousness, independently and self-motivatedly, otherwise you will not be able to go down the same path together; you will not travel together in the same direction. If you are not anchored in the same spiritual orientation, then when critical challenges come upon you you will make fundamentally different decisions, guided each by a different assumption or conviction – because you have fundamentally different understandings of what life is, how life is, and what really matters in life. You have to be travelling in the same direction first, for the same reason, in order to be able to complement one another in your union and enrich one another with your differences.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains
FAKE
ON MY MIND
People are illusions
in our mind
Emotional intrusions
Never mind
Out of sight
is not out of mind
Day and night
You’re on my mind.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
ASSUMPTION IS THE FILTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Realising you’ve been deceived Is very hard to believe Because it looked so real How it made you feel But that is the first rule of deception It must never look like deception When you look at a wolf clothed as a sheep You don’t see a wolf clothed as a sheep You see a sheep. Everything around you Could be a cover created to confound you. Our wishes, insecurities, vanities, memories, Propensities - they all block our senses. Assumption is the filter of consciousness. Worse, presumption. Everything is a dress, And who or what is wearing each dress You will learn by experience as you progress. But as you become more knowledgeable You ironically also become more gullible. You are stunned, as you learn and grow, To realise there’s still so much you don’t know. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
EVENING BLUES
Accept your loss Only God is the boss Many rivers to cross To get to the real Us What a quiet evening you are Your inner voice carries far Riding quietly in the back of the car My listening heart is ajar. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
TRUTH AS INTIMACY
The greatest Act of love and respect I can show a human being is to tell the person the truth. There is nothing worse I can do to you, or you can do to me, than to tell each other a lie or withhold the truth from one another when one asks for it. I don’t know about you, but I need truth like a drug and a medicine between me and the people close to me. It is everything. No matter what that truth is, I don’t really care. Even if it is a truth that will hurt me, disgust me, break me, shock me, kill me, withholding it from me or lying to me about it will put me in a worse hell and deeper anguish when I find out or if I sense it. If you’re close to me, don’t lie to me. My respect for you is more greatly diminished by dishonesty than by whatever it is you did that you’re trying to hide from me. Truth bonds me strongly to love.
Truthfulness is the deepest form of intimacy that I understand. If you are close to me and I am close to you, then just know this and be prepared for it: I will not lie to you. I will tell you the truth. If you don’t want to hear the truth, then don’t ask me. I can’t lie to the people I love. If I lie to you, if I withhold the truth from you (unless I’m doing it temporarily until we’re in a place and moment I can tell you), then it means that you are not close to me. And, conversely, if you lie to me, if you withhold the truth from me, then to me it means that you don’t or no longer love me or I’m not close to your heart. Some people think it’s the opposite: they withhold painful truths from the person they love, so as not to hurt the person. But if you do that to me, then it’s either you don’t really love me or you actually want to hurt me down the line.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains
UNTIL IT HAPPENS
You think it matters Until it happens And then you realise It doesn’t really matter You think it kills Until it happens And then you realise It only hurts for a while And then it disappears. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
SUDDEN JOLTS
I cry spontaneous tears
They come unbidden
Rolling back adult years
All of a sudden
The wounds, the tears
A shuddering bolt
And a painful spasm
Of old fears and new cares
That repeatedly scars
Anew my heart with a volt
Of shivering behind cold
Iron intangible bars
A body-wracking jolt
And then the next moment
I quietly laugh again
Grateful and content
To reap my fruits in pain
I don’t know when
The tears will come again
At 2 o’clock or at 10
In a meeting, at a game, or on a plane
Or taking a walk in the friend zone
Or sitting at home all alone.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 