OPEN

I am a very open person
If you come into my life
I will open up to you
But I will open you up too

If you are not ready to be open
Don’t come into my life  
Because I will naked you
And get to the core of You

What we see when we get there
We might not like
But we will understand and trust each other
From that moment onwards


Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

SPEAK YOUR MIND

You need to speak your mind
Or you will not be free
It will eat you up inside and grind
Away at your sanity.

Say what you really believe
Articulate what you really want
Your Inner piece shall grant you reprieve
When people’s reaction be blunt.

Truth is better than art
Honesty shines brighter than beauty
Your inner voice wants to chart
A path to peace of mind and to Liberty.

Speak your mind before you die.
If your heart moves your mind spiritually
Speak your mind unless you’ll die
Literally and figuratively.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE JOURNEY OF YOUR “I”

The miracle of life transcends the earth.
The adventures of the “I”
Survive many an earthly death and rebirth
And a “Beyond” not in the Sky
But right here beside you
And much too often beneath you.
Your Journey is shaping the Real you.

This is really the purpose of it all -
Not the Earthly but the Spiritual,
the true inner personality,
you the actual person, you, you, you!
Eternity requires integrity,
and self-conquest is our path thereto
in the struggle with the Material.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE BOUNDARY OF SELF

It‘s Hard to escape the gravity of the Earth
It’s Hard to outgrow the culture of your birth
It’s Hard for the tide to exceed its continental shelf
It’s Hard to see beyond the boundary of yourself.

The more you see, the more you see you
The farther you go, the farther YOU go
The more you do, the more you do you
You reap You because that’s what you sow

It’s Impossible to get from a thing more than it’s worth
It’s Impossible to go further north than the north
It’s Impossible for the earthly eye to see an Elf
It’s Impossible to grasp beyond the boundary of yourself

The more you overcome you the more you become you
Until in the end you are all you know
The more you wander, the more you understand you
Because in the end you are all you really can ever know.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

FIGHTING AS YOURSELF

You fight by being yourself
You lose by losing yourself
You win by remaining yourself
Improving yourself, perfecting yourself
As yourself
Your deepest and highest and purest self.

When you‘re not good enough for someone
Don’t respond by becoming someone else
Stay quietly yourself, your authentic self -
When you’re too good to be true in someone’s view
Don’t adjust and lower yourself to their comfort level
Stay proudly yourself, your honest self -
Just strive to be the best version of yourself.

You can only attract those in tune with yourself
When you show yourself -
And if they are few and far between
It’s still worth is. The loneliness is mean
Crushing and worse when you’re not yourself.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TIME IS TOO LONG SOMETIMES

You have to wait a little while to really
Get to know people’s character truly
If you let them unfold themselves freely
Around you they will unravel duly -
Yes, they will start with a façade first ideally
But the heart, the heart, the heart is unruly
It will break rank and show itself verily
Eventually, for patience grinds masks cruelly
To submission. Truth emerges voluntarily.
Not every friend is a friend
Not every enemy is an enemy
But sometimes you have to wait till the end
To recognise each person clearly.
Unfortunately by then it might be too late
To correct what happened at the gate.
You let the wrong person in
And kept the wrong person out -
O voice within, o voice within, o voice within,
Help me to accurately check people out.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

BEWARE OF ECHO CHAMBERS

Beware of echo chambers.
People who speak your thoughts
Will soothe your loneliness
But won’t show you your blind spots.

Listen also to those people
Who see you completely differently
From how you see yourself.
Completion seems sometimes unfriendly.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

GO YOUR WAY

Don‘t take everything
That comes your way
For the way has everything

The way will make you lose your way
If you believe everything
And take everything
That the way brings your way

Learn to look away
From the way
When the way
Is not going your way

Know the way
And know your way
And know the difference.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Hiding in plain sight
If you don’t want people to know you
Let them think they already know you
If you don’t want people to see you
Show them daily the you that is not you
They will be looking at you
But they will not see you

Conversely
You might be lonely
For the like-minded will be blindsided by you
And will not see you to connect with you
And what you do, they won’t know you’ve done
And when you go, they won’t know you’re gone
And when you die, nobody will miss you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WAY BACK HOME

Don‘t mourn me when I die
Wave me goodbye
I will be going home

If I miss my way home
Then I will come
Back again to retry.

So don’t mourn me when I die
I did not come to stay
I came here to find my way

Back Home.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river