LOVE, LOYALTY AND HONESTY

True love is given automatically
Irresistibly and totally
Without being demanded extraordinarily
Or exclusively.

Loyalty is given freely
Happily, personally and genuinely
Without being prompted forcefully
Or granted guiltily.

Only honesty is voluntary
It’s a choice, it’s not arbitrary
You decide deliberately in the sanctuary
Of your heart to be honest or to the contrary.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

GRASPING

Why don’t people recognise a great thing
And just take it when it comes their way?
Without hesitation, without doubting
The magic, just join in the game and play?

Maybe because it does not always
Come in the form we expect and want -
Because God’s Ways are not our ways,
Our intellect is sharp but our intuition is blunt.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

(NOT) YOURS

When it’s no longer yours
It doesn’t hurt if someone else has it,
It only hurts as long as it’s still yours
And someone else has it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

CHOOSE

The Person I choose
Has to choose me too
In order for me to choose them
There is no us without you
Only me.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

RELATIONSHIP WITH REALITY

All I can tell you is this,
Never entertain liars in your life.
No matter how painful reality is,
Let the Truth always be your wife
Or husband. Not a human or a face
But Truth itself should be your true spouse,
Permanently nourishing you deep within you.
Not a building, not an edifice or a space
But the Truth itself should be your real house,
Permanently protecting you deep within you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WHEN YOU STOP WANTING

When you stop wanting to know everything,
You start knowing what to really want;
When you start wanting to grow into winning,
You start growing, focused, up and to the front.

Never forget the kind of people and things
That rejected you when you were nobody and nothing,
Your knowledge of them shall be the wings
That shall fly you over obstacles into your blessing.

Absorb the pain and become serious,
Trudge through the terrain no matter how tedious,
Be your true self and you’ll be mysterious,
And never return to all that was injurious.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

SERVICE

In the morning when the sun arises
A light shall also dawn within you,
A clarity that intrinsically recognises
What on Earth you are supposed to do -

To awaken to service to the good,
For kindness, honesty, courage and humility
Are life’s deeper nourishment and food
And the template of humanity.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

YOU KNOW

Go at your own pace
Let no one hurry you
Your life has deeper value
Than just to be in a race.

Frame your own narrative
Own your own story
Share your own memory
Everybody’s is selective.

Only you know
Deep within your soul
Your heart’s true goal
You alone know.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

BAY OF HEART

There is always something to say
And no one to say it to
The heart is a deep wide bay
Where stories and strangers sail into
To quietly offload, sit and recuperate
Locked in the soliloquy of the seeker
The pain-cooked rebirth to elevate
Phoenix back to Light in a world grown bleaker.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner rivero

JUST THE TWO OF US

If it’s just the two of us, let it be just the two of us. Don’t believe what anyone from outside tells you.

If I open myself to you then, believe me, nobody knows me better than you do.

Trust your heart and trust me. The exclusive magic at the core of our love will see us through.

But if you fail to bring up the courage to believe, or if you yield to outside influence, you damage our super glue.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains