Never join the crowd Let your silence be loud - Never yield to the crowd Let your humility be proud - The opinion of the crowd Is a blindfold, a shroud - We’re all parts of a crowd, But each with a spirit endowed. Don’t lose yourself in the crowd Because when you were allowed To come into being, you vowed To become an individual, unbowed. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
Poems
HINDSIGHT
Knives in my back They help me stand upright You’ve got my back Covered with purpose and bite Back-stabbing attacks Strengthen my will to fight What in foresight a man lacks He makes up for with hindsight. The opened eyes at the back of your head Are the lessons learned from the life you’ve led The wars in which you bravely bled And the wars from which you falsely fled Treachery in you and others is rife But you learn to fight better looking ahead Your rear-facing eyes bring back to life All the things you thought were dead. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
VISITOR FROM HEAVEN
You were there I saw you even if many others did not You were there I saw you even if even my eyes did not You were there I saw you. I saw you in the swelling of my heart In the paths that my thoughts did chart I saw you, for they were thoughts of thee. Thoughts of all those things which Thou art The origin, the beginning, the head, the start I saw you in my sensing of eternity. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
YOU ARE THE ONE I‘M THINKING OF
The light goes on and off like a shivering bulb in a cold room Your heart is not enough to beat back the nocturnal bloom Dawn, the dusk is tough the mother of both glow and gloom Lover, your mouth is rough when you kiss at night you don’t know whom Shadows long call your bluff but your birdsong cries out mushroom I’m you’re d’healer I’ve got the good stuff sweeping you off your feet like your bride broom Yes, you are the one I’m thinking of When the new moon starts to wax and loom. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
THE FORGOTTEN YOU
How could I forget you?
And forget that I forgot you?
Even this I forgot.
Forgot your face
Forget your eyes
Forgot your ways
Forgot our ties
Forgot the words we spoke in the night
Forgot the cadence of your voice’s delight
Forgot your touch, so deep, so light
I did not even remember you as a dream
You just were never there it would seem
Memory is a fast-flowing vanishing stream.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
LONGING WITHOUT BELONGING
Half me half you I became because of you Neither me nor you I remain and so do you If I became fully me And you became fully you Would there be any similarity Between me and you? For the urge that binds us Is the urge than divides us We are similar in longing But dissimilar in belonging. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
DON’T HURT
The things that should hurt Don’t hurt, why not? I thought I cared a little - I guess a little is not a lot. In the private part of the public, What a plot dem a plot; In the public part of the private, I’ll continue to get shot. I have seen through it all, Through us all and through our rot. Even as I strive, faith in God is the only thing I’ve truly got. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
POEMS FROM THE INNER RIVER
It’s flowing beside me, the inner river, and I’m fishing poems from it everyday. This project is the English parallel to “Das Jahrzehnt der deutschen Dichtung”, also to be found daily on this blog.
Live while you’re alive, Che.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
26.05.2025
IN YOUR WORLD
In your world I’m weird I write poems everyday Money to me is not wealth Politics is an illusion they play Religions are superficial God is different from what they say Intimacy is often artificial Your way is not my way I don’t attach, I don’t detach I seem to neither go nor stay And yet somehow I still touch You much deeper than they. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
A DEEPER SURVIVAL
The more the world is flooded with A.I., the more I hunger for natural things - Natural images honest to the human eye, a genuine human voice that sings - Content that springs from the human “I”, what the original human spirit brings - The truth’s rough edges, not a smooth lie, the exertion that with evolution swings - The more the world is overwritten by A.I., the more I gravitate towards natural things. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 