Every Tuesday
They gather here
A flock of wild geese
And play for nobody
Their smiles
Each time their smiles
Break my heart
Open Stage
Not a dime
What’s their crime?
Listen in
To the sound of happiness
It is full of sadness
Life is music
Friends are memory
Death is immortality.
————–
che chidi chukwumerije
————–
Internet battle
Between love and hate
Some call it war
Some call it debate
Some say it’s better to shoot words
Than bullets and bombs
Some say it is because of these words
That bullets and bombs come
Humankind has long yearned
To meet all humankind
Now we’re all on the same page
But still not of one mind
The war that is brewing
Wherever it takes place
You will be caught in the web
And it will be in your face.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I know I’ll never have it
It will never be my lot
I know I’ll always want it
It will always be my thought
I know I’ll forever have it
It will forever be all I’ve got
If I seek hard and seek right and seek long for it
It will elude me not, my seeking won’t come to nought
But if I die before I find it
Please, somebody, seek what I sought
And, when you find it, tell it
About me who sought for it
And found it not.
————–
che chidi chukwumerije
————–
A canoe is floating on a Lagos lagoon
A young lad in a face cap
Holds in his fist a fishing net
He looks briefly over at me
Looks away again
We met and parted in that look
The bus drove off
A brief moment of contact
I could almost swear
We understood each other completely
Without words
Though we think us dead,
We live.
Though we think we different
We more similar than we think.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Water water everywhere
Why is the world full of water?
The earth like a primeval bowl
Has been filled with water from a pitcher
Tilted down over a heavenly shoulder
High above the material sphere
Where love flows everywhere
Where the spirits never thirst
Where the urge to help alone comes first –
Take me there, take me there, take me there.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
The punishment for being brave
Is having nothing to do
But be brave –
A tidal wave is rising in my soul.
The reward for being brave
Is having to do nothing
But be brave –
A tidal wave is crashing in my soul.
She warmed her cold tongue with
The flaming words of a passionate poet and
Lashed a gutter of decadent lava on
My soul.
Yet I told her still the truth
Again and again and again
And again and again, again
And again.
– che chidi chukwumerije
Where she is is home,
Hope, I shall no longer roam
Any further, she’s my world,
My home, around me curled,
Unfurled, wanting me bad,
I, this never-ending fairy-lad.
Home, where she is is
Home, hope, land of bliss, is
Where I stay, I roam no more,
I return home and want no more.
– che chidi chukwumerije
I don’t know if you’ve heard
There is a land where girls were stolen
Kidnapped it’s called in sociopolitical speak
That land happens to be my country
Those girls another set of casualties
In a war of religion and education
Let’s just call it a war on humanity
The candles are going out
From one country to the next
Some swear the second world war is not yet over
Others boast the cold war is far from done
Meanwhile an old war has long begun
Some call this the third world war
The last one apparently Nostradamus encrypted
For sure it is a religious war on faith
Everyday it opens up a new field of battle
Now it has picked on my country too
And made her the new local theater of a global scourge
But how do you win a religious war?
By killing, or by forgiving?
By retaliating or by reconciling?
It is a philoshical puzzle
A paradox of semantics
In which real people die everyday.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The hidden feather
There and not there
Fluttering, silent, soft
Bearing a great thing aloft.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
It’s just life
No pause
Inescapable laws
No brakes
No breaks
No breaking out – you’re done in
Few gives, few takes
The dark is near
It is in there
It’s always there
It’s just life
You pay the price – that’s your role
There is a myth, a legend
A hurt-filled, painful, word
They call it love
There are no guarantees
But they say
It will set you free – nothing more
It won’t bring you wealth
It won’t bring you power
It’s just life
Keep it warm
Keep it safe
Keep it alive – love – it’ll keep you alive.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 