When you‘ve had everything, you realise it‘s happiness you want – and then you‘re ready to give up everything for it. How ironic.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems
LIFE IS IN THE HOW?
We all part.
Your best company is yourself –
Be at home in yourself
Wherever you are.
Life is in the How.
Not in the What, Why, Where or When.
It is the How that is
The platform of eternal living
Not the nation, not the race
Not politics, power, money or gender
Not family and every thing that will pass –
Only the How counts.
The way you in every moment live your life
Your inner life
This alone will keep you living and happy
Long after all Matter has died.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
WHEN THE PATH FEELS WRONG, YOU SEARCH HARDER
You might sometimes find yourself, for long periods of your earthlife, striving after the wrong things; even worse, striving via the wrong principles and means; unaware of how you got there, sometimes unaware perhaps even of whatever it was you once really wanted, and not knowing how to change back onto the right track.
This is a trick that life plays on every Seeker – to force you to light up the inner Lantern within your consciousness; for the aim of the cocoon is to turn the caterpillar into a butterfly. So too does life make you blind in order to awaken your Insight – and then, nothing can blind you anymore apart from you yourself. Sometimes the wrong path is the right path, as long as you keep on honestly and tirelessly seeking. You will find yourself.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ETERNAL SUNRISE
When the Darkness wakes up in the morning, the first thing it does is to look out of the window, see the Light shinning outside – and become full of anger, envy and rage all over again.
Because yesterday when night fell and it went to sleep, it made the great mistake of thinking that the Light is now dead.
The Light is never dead. It will rise again. It is we who turn our backs on it.
But it will rise again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
THICKER THAN BLOOD AND WATER
Brotherhood means to stand and work in the same spirit.
When you are a child, then brotherhood means to be born of the same parent or parents.
But the older one gets, and the more mature one grows; the more one enters into the living gout of one’s destiny, and the more one senses and fulfill one’s destiny, then the less brotherhood remains a being born of the same parents and becomes a standing and working in the same spirit. Spiritual homogeneity is true brotherhood.
The same thing with sisterhood.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
ALL WE SEE IS THE OUTSIDE
They say I was born rich
So nobody nobody nobody
Wipes my tears when I weep
Not my rich father
Nor my poor mother
Not my sister, not my brother
Not my society or any other
Only my own hands
Only my own hands
Gonna wipe my own tears
I’ve learnt my lesson
Gonna be my own person
Lordy, I’m gonna be my own person
They say I was born gifted
So nobody nobody nobody
Feeds me when I’m down and hungry
Not my father who doesn’t understand me
Nor my mother who overrates me
Not my sister, not my brother though they love me
But they’ll never never know me
If you want to know humanity
Look down when you’re up
And look up when you’re down
And pray
To never get caught in the middle
The middle pays for the poor’s pains
And the rich’s gains
And goes to bed empty-handed on an empty stomach
Hungry for work that really pays the needed holidays
I’ve learnt my lesson
Lordy, I’m gonna be my own person.
They say I was born poor
So I have no right to share in the fruits of others’ labour
I should use my own gifts
And I should be grateful for every little favor
Favour is the taste of their flavour
But a drowning man’s got no choice
Truth and irony – they are my voice
That’s why nobody understands us.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
DISTANCE
I have a longing for intimacy
Not satisfied by sex
A craving for voyeurism
Not quenched by porn
A yearning for universal entanglement
Not gratified by orgies
And a need for intense borderlessness
Not staked by perversity
What is it?
I have an itch for mystification
Not calmed by lying
A desire for friction
Not stilled by confrontation
A propensity for destruction
Not quelled by murder
And a burning for escape
Not silenced by suicide
What is it?
It’s like I am separated from myself
And watch myself through a window
And everything that I do
Is actually being done by my shadow
While I wait for something real
Really really real.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SOLIDARITY IN VICISSITUDE
What’s the point? A good start,
A bad fall. Bright sunshine, broken
By patches of night –
Hunger, loneliness, all that you have
Is your soul and the spirit
In it –
You.
It’s not the door cringing,
It’s the stomach wringing…
It’s not a statue,
It’s a lonely person…
Be good to me, brother man.
Sister woman.
Be good to me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
EXERTION IS SELF-PRESERVATION
Sometimes you have to be humble
And accept help when you’re down
But sometimes you have to be proud
And reject help, and help yourself
The first will save you in an emergency
And steady you for one day
The second will prepare you for eternity
And save you from extinction
Adversity is the friend of development
Challenge is the wake up call of genius
Obstacles are the partner of survival
Life’s true wish is to awaken us
Our time in this world will end one day
Father Sun and Mother Earth
Were just a temporary bridge God built
To teach us how to walk.
Endless Aid is a silent Killer
It is worse than AIDS and worse than Ebola
If you want God’s help along the way
First you have to be walking upon the way
The way of search and of exertion
For exertion alone brings self-preservation
Not help, not aid, not running away
Because you can’t run away from yourself.
Humility and pride are not mutually exclusive
This pride is not the synonym of vanity
For when you become too proud to take it
You humble yourself and learn how to make it.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
GOOGLE GLASSES
We all become google’s spy
Each of us a pupil of its all-seeing eye
Using us to watch us
In deepest privacy it will touch us
We no longer need to surf
To deliver data to big brother
Just look cool in their camera glasses
And you become their agent undercover
Sorry 007 it’s no longer for your eyes only
Everybody’s licensed to spy on society
On Google-majesty’s secret service.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 