There are thoughts that define
And there are thoughts that defy…
There are hearts that deny
Hearts that desire
And hearts that never run dry –
And there are hearts
That run dry –
But I won’t cry.
There were thoughts that struck me
Thoughts that thunderstruck me
And left me dumbstruck –
These are the thoughts that stuck to me…
But if we say sometimes yes
Sometimes no
Sometimes…
Yes sometimes no sometimes yes.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
How much of it is left?
How much of the mist
Still revisits my mornings
Before my thoughts come calling?
From afar, I
Mean from gazing
Across time, it
Is a wonder to hold in
Your heart a
Thing that never
Fades, never
Weakens, changes
Never, teaches you how
To know the
Things you really
Love. They are the
Ones you never
Forget.
This carry with you as you mature
Measure with this everything you nurture
The camera behind your mind
Will click and capture
A lifelong picture
Of the things that slipped through,
The people and places that got to the core of you.
It will continue to happen inside, an observant lake
Like another part of you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Cumbrian Lines: Poems Inspired By The Lake District.
Simultaneously..
How does that work?
When the moon is the only light
She must not be ashamed of her nakedness
If the sun feels he is so great
Well, where is he at night
When we need him the most
To keep away?
Look not upon your faults
When you laugh, let it come
From deep within and make
Your tears jealous.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Have you ever listened to
The night talking to itself
While you lay there beside one another
And not a word occurred to you?
You see the end approaching
Like a boat coming to the shore
To take you away
Away from a laughter called love
And as your worlds drift apart
In the space of one short night
Strange, but no words occur to you
To adequately say goodbye.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Drooping, a wing, the corners of a mouth
A face, a heart, a pair of wings again
Drooping –
A second life –
All alone. What does this mean? It means
Nobody has ever grasped.
You see the flower at dusk
Which you saw at dawn
The flower recognises you and opens up to you
But you pass it by
You have gone blind
You have walled yourself in
In that moment in which
You lost your
Insight…
By and by, you learn again
To see
The same flower of always
Waiting beside your heart,
I leap.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The last was the first
It burst out of the blue dark skies
And brought light! It shone
And won our hearts, our better parts, our bitter parts
Yet it was the last.
The first was like the last
It melted away softly into wintry blues
And, oozing, seemed to reunite with windows closed
And nothing more was to be said, all appeared dead.
Yet it was the first.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
An azure mind paints lightly the horizon
Its thoughts a cloudy mess
That grow old too quickly and fall to
Your knees from these incontinent skies
Like a stranger walking through the
Valley of the Shadow of Death
I trek noiselessly through my thoughts
And leave the plane-flying to the pilots
The reason why these things are writing me
Is because I have ripped out old pages
And need to be re-marked, re-bled, re-lined
For I have lost my old mind.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
My heart won’t stop beating
The urge to remember
A certain curve of the road
That leads out of Grasmere
Towards Rydal
Where the motor road and the lake
Part the wanderer’s feet
Step upon an earthen path that shall
Unhurrying though the trees
Curve the curving lake into the little bridge
At the lake’s dove tail, brought us
To the shore at the foot of a hill
Where, turning, we face
Far across Grasmere lake
The enchanting rough and tumble
Chained Cumbrian hills…
Like a worried teacher
Anxious that the fleeting pupil
Fully absorb what he, left alone
Must one day on his own remember
Drawn out of the depths of a retentive heart
That wasn’t deaf and blind
When it wandered this path, admiring nature
With such peculiar urgency does this curve in the road
Where the road and the lake separate
And the woods begin, stand
Before my inner eye
Like an evening star long after the Sun has died…
A trigger, for when I focus
On that turn of the road, I see again
The rest of the walk
That followed it
Continues to follow me.
A familiar friend
A giving, undemanding lover
A memory already more precious
Than Silver and Gold.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
(Cumbrian Lines: Poems inspired by the Lake District)
I hold you tenderly
Like a precious thought
I sparingly share
Only with strangers
For they know not its worth
Will not rob me of it or its meaning or
Crush it to death like a writer
Crushes an idea in his mind –
Might be a butterfly
Might be a petal
Might be a story that would have changed minds –
Gone, unwritten, unspoken, unshared.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 