When they‘re done with you They hate you For showing them their darker side And showing them how much they love it. Never talk to them in the open Only in secret That‘s when they love you That‘s where they crave it. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems
WALKING WOUNDS
We are all walking wounds Chimeras and Illusions trigger us And then we fall into a deep hole Lashing out at shadows that don‘t exist And hurting real people who never hurt us And who don’t know why we‘re hurting them Inside them where they walk their own wounds. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
EAGLE AT HEART
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
CLOUDRUSH
A river of clouds rushed through a corridor of mountains proud - If a giant had stood there, no doubt he has just poured his feelings outwards, towards some distant gourd that holds some distant fjord. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
PLANE OVER CLOUD VALLEYS
Clouds nestling between the
dark craggy mountains,
sitting in the valleys like velvet cushions –
Silent solemn sentinels rising upwards,
peaks to greet these metal intrusions –
I wonder if they think we are just fleeting illusions.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
ONCE WE WERE LIGHT
Once we were light
But the world weighed us down
Drowned out our cry of resistance
And put a bandage over our eyes
A desperate cry for help
Before we fell silent
And started to look silently at our children
The way once our parents looked at us
Now we know what they were thinking:
Retain your magic! Retain your lightness!
Even as they said to us worriedly:
You have to learn to fit into the system –
Knowing it was not the way
But knowing no other way
Or knowing it but not having the heart
To push us off the cliff –
Because not everybody grows wings
When falling through the gap.
The generation gap.
Now we watch our children worriedly
Wanting them to become like us
And wanting them to stay themselves too.
Once we were light
But the world weighed us down.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
RELAY
If every new generation
Rose up twice as high as the one before,
Humanity‘s elevation
Would see us soon knocking on heaven‘s door.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
BIG AND SMALL
In this world
You have to be small
To be big.
Big people
Are made small
By the world’s smallness.
If you are too big
You are too big
To be seen.
If you are small
You are big enough
For the small.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
DIFFERENT
To be vulnerable is to be honest. To be honest is to be vulnerable. To be different is to be vulnerable to be honest. To be different is to be honest to be vulnerable. It is a strange place to be everytime No matter how many times you go there. Each time it feels different. It requires bravery everytime. Even when you‘re familiar with it Still you never get used to it. Because it is different. Everytime. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Footsteps On The Sands Of Time
Kwame, you would have turned 47 today, but that dream died a long time ago. You didn‘t even quite make it out of teenage.
But, brother, your few poems have long made it unto the pages of our hearts for all eternity, like footsteps on the sands of time.
Available on Amazon:
Footsteps On The Sands Of Time: (Poems)
– by Kwame Ekwueme Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 