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)
There is still so much to draw from
So much love
It becomes easy if
You don’t pair it with Ambition.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Lonely becomes your friend
And you marvel
At his eloquence, deep and complex
Gnawing at your heart
Seeking the answers
Only you can give to him
To set him free.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A man searches for
The man in the mirror
A woman searches
For the
Woman in the water
A man will stand his ground
A woman will wet her ground
I don’t understand gender roles
But I understand tender truths.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Art in all its forms
Is the thief of time
Stealing from the past
Sharing with the present
And the future
Like Robin Hood
For time is wealthy in memory
And, like Shylock, reluctant to give.
An evening song will reawaken your life’s morning
A painting will view like déjà vu from lives unremembered
And a poem will whisper your life’s story back to you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There is a graveyard thence
With benches placed all over
Where people come a-steady
To ponder life and death
There is a certain bench
Apart from every other
Where I sit when poetry
Takes clean away my breath.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I’m not talking
To the part of you you can control
With your thinking
Switch off and on in your soul
Two conversations run parallel
Unaware of one another
Just like politics debates but can’t foretell
Human laws of spirit and nature
Bend my mind and bend me back
When you leave, leave your truth behind
Worlds and worlds and worlds of meaning
That nourish slowly my mind.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Pick with care
The enemies you bear
When the unexpected is near
They shall be there
To crown you.
When true friends
Step off the boat
Curious, how the river
Turns your coat
Around you.
Clear your throat
Vomit when no-one is looking
Regurgitated oaths
Pressure-cooking
Sunbrowns you.
If diplomacy
Be their tactless god
How shall he decipher
Your non-committal nod,
Proud you?
But brave soldier
It is the art of war
To live on in pages
Of folklore
Unbound to you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There are many roads
But only one will lighten your load
The question is
What price are you prepared to pay?
Life gave me a lemon tree
A pinch of love will feed the multitude
The bearer of the word will walk on wind
And disappear unseen, grateful to have simply been
Himself.
What price are you prepared to pay?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Once so deep, now so shallow
Once never walking the path I now follow
My farm lies fallow
Another dimension
Same old sung in a new key
Sharps, naturals, empty flats
We’ve moved house, you, I
I like it that there is no barrier
In between
My view into your eyes, your view into my heart –
It gives me hope
Furnishes me with counterproof more powerful
Than the deliberations of thoughts
Did you renounce anything for this love, this hour, this
Life? – The words grow stronger
The more I write; the light grows brighter
Within the night, beneath the descending Halo.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 