I walk through the valley of pain on my own
By the time friends come I’m already gone
I am All the colours between black and brown
Call me Africa or call me Diaspora, a birded song
Fly without perching, there’s no home away from home.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
Sun-burnished
The sea slit
The morning lit up
Furnished my wit
The varnished mirror beneath me crawls
And over-yonder my sun it calls
Back tarnished memory bit by bit.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
You have to get there to remember.
On the way there you will forget
Where you are going to
And why.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Places change people
People change places
Places change people
People change places
Races change people
People change races
Races change people
People change races
Faces change people
People change faces
Faces change people
People change faces
The person who started this poem
Is not the person who finished it.
Poems change people –
But people don‘t change poems.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Eternal sunset
Unending dusk
Rolled along the edge of the earth
Creased the Northpole and gave birth to
Eternal sunrise
Never-ending dawn
From dusk to dawn like a painted horizon
At twilight born by a giant drawn.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 