JOYFUL ACTIVITY

There’s a reason why it’s called Eternal Life,
Not perpetual snooze or eternal sleep.
Stop saying “rest in peace”
to those who have left the earth for the afterlife.
Wish them instead a safe journey
And Joyful luminous activity
For all eternity.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
#poemsthatmakeyouthink

LIFE GOES ON

The departed are not dead
They do not rest in peace
If they rest, they have no peace
If they have peace, they‘re not at rest.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
#poemsthatmakeyouthink

LIGHTRISE

When more than the sun rises
And more than the moon is full
When enlightenment itself materialises
Upon and within your soul

When you awaken in the deepest sense
And the light of your spirit fills your eyes
Then shall you experience
The dawn of the morning Lightrise.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

HEAVEN

To serve God, humbly and quietly
Without pomp and pageantry
Is Heaven.

Modestly and consistently,
With conviction, gratefully.
Expecting no reward,
No recognition, no award –

Because the joy of service
Is reward enough –

Is Heaven.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

DISTANCE

I have a longing for intimacy
Not satisfied by sex
A craving for voyeurism
Not quenched by porn
A yearning for universal entanglement
Not gratified by orgies
And a need for intense borderlessness
Not staked by perversity
What is it?

I have an itch for mystification
Not calmed by lying
A desire for friction
Not stilled by confrontation
A propensity for destruction
Not quelled by murder
And a burning for escape
Not silenced by suicide
What is it?

It’s like I am separated from myself
And watch myself through a window
And everything that I do
Is actually being done by my shadow
While I wait for something real
Really really real.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

REMEMBER

Sunday
My body has returned from Worship
My spirit not yet

The sounds around me are like a dream
Far away
Where sunrise is sunset

The home around me is
A faint reflection of another Home
I often forget.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

HUMILITY

The mystery of the Grail
The higher you go, the less worthy you feel
And when you get to the Top
You drop.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THE SPLIT

I’m quiet tonight
Never mind that it’s morning
I’m still dreaming

I remember a friend
We had high hopes for his future
Yet he chose the Easy

Now I’m all alone
On the road we once chose together
Watching it grow longer

This pain I keep inside
Greater than death, worse than loss
Treachery’s dungeons.

If I doubted reincarnation
This life has taught me a bitter lesson
For I must come again

The work is unfinished
The cards will be reshuffled
I will come again.

Then I hear, so soft
The sounds of morning dawning
The past is over now.

Those words, those strange words
That baffle the minds of politics
Of culture and science

You can call me Fool
You can call me mad, and yet
You too will come again.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

HELL

You had to go to hell
To get the truth
After your ejected it
In heaven.

Don’t you know?
That’s the way it works
My friend
Hope you get it now.

Hell is Heaven’s secret school.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

LOCKED INSIDE

There is one frozen lake
That thaws not in the spring
It is winter of wordless ache
In my awakening

In my beginning
After I awoke
I greeted the earth and forgot
The language Creation spoke

Before the big bang
And ding dong merrily on high
Once upon a time
After a bell rang

Before the big bang
A song my spirit sang
Song of flame
In tongue of flame.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije