Sing of green
For soon it’ll be gone to dust
A memory of autumn’s ancestor
Saying I used to know a lass
And her name was Summer
Yet look underneath her smile
Yes I mean her brightest smile
Where a shadow sweet as secret sorrow
Suckled on her honey lips
And read my thoughts of you
Then sing with me, sing of green
From the caverns of throat
Dry hoarse tears, from depths of wrong
And right, let the hordes of your
Passion shout with song!
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There is a time, a moment
To say yes –
You feel it, you know it, you just
Have to say it
Yet you drown it in conversation
Puncture it with rhetoric
Hang a cloud of Why over it
Betray it with a question mark, and then fall silent
There is a time, a moment to
Say yes – only the brave
Will grasp it. The fainthearted
Will run away into a familiar point of view
Every meeting is a thing of beauty
Everything that confuses you and
Throws you off-balance is a gift from life
Knocking on the door of a greater you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Every tree eventually
Bears its fruit
Look not for reason
Wait just for its season
Long is the wait when
Deep is the root
You don’t know your friend
Until the end.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I chanced to look near dawn
Out of my sorrow
And indigo was the wall
Outside my window
Surprised, I looked away
From night, my widow
Then stole another glance again
At my tomorrow
Tomorrow was in mute concert
Briefly I am my cello
Confused at my own melody
My poem, my strange bedfellow
But night is sheared now finally
Soft day echoes my hello
And as I rise, my waking thought
Sinks away into my pillow.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A lonely sunset bird walked home
We watched him go
Then we strolled until we came to the field
The empty field
The barren field
There the old man stopped and pointed
It used to be a forest once
We felled the trees, to make of it a garden
But someone forgot to plant the seeds
The rains, they came in vain
Washed away
And now the sun burns away –
And as we strolled away again he said
That field is another wasted generation
That fruitless field.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
***
Last night something strange
Cracked a door open on the wall
Of my memory, without even knockin’ twice
It came out of nowhere, suddenly.
A song, I was 17, house party
Whose house? I don’t remember any more
There she was, in the dark
Dancing with me, like I was the night wind
She a young tree, swaying, leaves shuddering slowly
Two shadows in a room full of shadows
House of teenagers about to wake up
From youth with only memories faded of yesterday
How long did this song quietly travel
Through time, to waylay me in that lookback moment last night
And take me back to that other night so many years ago?
Every memory I think I’ve forgotten
Is stored in some song somewhere, seeking me again
So don’t ask me why I’m dancing oldskool
Time is a candyman, stuck to your melting heart
Memory memory will knock your boots back
Never ever ever gonna let you go
Where is she now? My young mango.
She is a part of this song now
And last night I saw her, danced with her, again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerijeem>
These are fruits, and
This is a season of ripening
Your days are a basket of wishes
Filling empty
Rises blood sun
Ripen wound seeds everywhere
Simultaneously in
Broken concrete jungles
Be on your guard, brother
Like a watchman from his tower
These are Grave times, and
This is the season of the recurring demon.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
How maddening it must be
Upon reincarnation to see
The fullness of your memory
In all its grime and glory –
Take it away, take it away
I don’t want to know today
The sadness and joy of yesterday
With my heart let me find my way
I fell in love, in love anew
With dawn and dusk, with dream and dew
With life and love, through vice and virtue
Another me, another you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Start again
It was all a lie
Deceitful illusion
Full of grinning fools
Everybody looking worried
When a pin dropped
Yet nodding wisely their heads
When the world goes to war
They all fear the dawn
The end of the act
Wake up from your heaven
You’re living in hell
Just start again
Freed of illusions
Eyes opened wide…
And, yes, doubt the preacher too.
— CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Some questions are young
Saplings lost in a world of mystery
Too soon despairing and coming to the conclusion
That some questions have no answers
Some answers are old
You have to journey the whole length to grasp them
From the mountain-top of distant insight
They watch the questions growing in the valley
Child, when I tell you you won’t understand
’Tis not folly on my part, seeing that you don’t understand
I say it to you not so that you’ll believe, accept or understand
But so that when it’s your turn you will remember
Remember that I told you that the answers come late
So despair not, thinking you’ve lived in vain
Despair not, ’tis the nature of life
To answer tomorrow the questions it posed yesterday
Today is its gift to you
That you may wander and seek by yourself
And wonder, and marvel, and err, lose, learn, and grow
And fear, and fight, and love, laugh, and live, and find and become yourself.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 