Tomorrow is not promised
Today is life’s greatest gift
Very soon, daily, it is finished
Tomorrow is not promised
Today alone is the paradigm shift
The experimental drift
The drop and the lift.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems
LIFE RECIPROCATES
If you create beauty,
Beauty will create you.
If you give birth to a child,
The child will give birth to you.
If you make a mistake,
The mistake will make you.
If you reach for the Highest,
The Highest will reach for you.
And if you look for the Grail,
The Grail will find you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Paradigm shift
But until the White, Arabian and Asian hearts
Become free of Racism
Towards their Black counterpart…
It‘s just a Greek gift
And until the Black and African mind
Becomes free of Colonial Mentality
Tribalism and Religious enmity…
Paradise is still adrift.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
SEEING THROUGH
One of the downsides of seeing through humanity
Is that nothing inspires or excites you anymore
Or fills you with a sense of expectation…
Because you always bear the sad certainty
Within you
Of knowing how things are going to end.
One of the upsides of seeing through humanity
Is that nothing disappoints and shocks you anymore
Or fills you with a sense of hopelessness…
Because you always bear the the quiet recognition
Through experiencing
Of knowing that things always re-start.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
COMRADE
There was an eagle in your eyes
In your gait
In your voice
In your words
In your deeds
In your mind
In your Heart, Daddy –
It was you. Your spirit. Your essence.
That eagle is flown away today
Six years ago
But the arch of its flight is still imprinted
In my memory
Like daylight in the nighttime.
A Comrade in life
And a Comrade in the afterlife.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
In Memoriam:
Comrade Uche Chukwumerije
11.01.1939 – 19.04.2015
Ugo Mba 1 Isuochi
Dike Ogu Ndi Igbo
Convinced Socialist. Proud Panafricanist.
Father. Teacher. Comrade. Enigma.
YOU AND YOUR STRENGTH
When I was younger
My strength was stronger
Than I was
And it made me do what it wanted
And made me undaunted.
Now that I am older
I have become bolder
Than my strength
And I make it do what I want
On every other battlefront.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
SIMPLICITY
It is a complicated road
that brings a mind to simplicity
But it is simple roads
that defy us with their complexity.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ALERTNESS
Be present
In the moment
Or when your moment comes
You will be absent
In it.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
DEJA VU
Is the future
a story we read in the past
and forget in the present?
Or is tomorrow
a story we ourselves wrote yesterday
and life is simply reading it back to us today.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
#poemsthatmakeyouthink
WEAKNESS
The greatest strength
is the strength to look beyond
your own strength
and find in your weakness
strength in other people’s strength.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
#poemsthatmakeyouthink
