Poems

GREEN VEGETABLES

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

I remember watching
When I was a little boy
Hamlet
In my father’s bedroom
By my father’s side

He was munching on Green Vegetables
And I was observing
Sometimes him
And sometimes the television…

And he said:
This is the mystery.
You know… You see…
Why didn’t he do it at that moment?
Or
If he knew that he could not do it
Why did he try to begin at all
To obey his father’s call to action??

He shook his head
And munched away coolly
Upon his Green Vegetables…

And I was trying to figure out
If he was asking me a question
Or giving me an answer…

(for Daddy)

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

WITHOUT LOVE

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

Whatever you do
Do it with love
Or you will die without love…

Whatever you do
Do it with love
Or you will be buried without love

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

WHAT IS IT EXACTLY THAT HAPPENED…?

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

What is it exactly that happened
In the moment
That we met ourselves again?

A very strange thing
Stranger than strange
A strange change
Came upon you and me
And now we are one.

What is love?
What is this love
That is greater than us?
What does it want with us? What?
I miss you.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

BIRD OF PASSAGE

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

5 minutes of midnight
5000 midnights of missing your moon
may your return be soon

you crawled like a gecko
all over my surface
and you kept on nodding and running

a crowd of summerlovers is heading south
the winter has beached north
airport is breath-short, what’s a goodbye worth?

wherever you go, think of me
like a plane that ever returns
like a bird, like a thought, like seasons and the night.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

READING MEANING

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

The strange bird
Strangely heard
Their fear as a song for which
It had no dance-steps
Their hatred as a tongue for which
It had no dictionary
All it had was its strangeness
And its strangeness was its Dance
And its book of many Meanings.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

TOMORROW’S

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

Look not too far
In search of what is gone
Because what was
Is what will be

In me is the fire and the power

The rock, the stone, the adamantium
Is inside the heart.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THE AWAKENING

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

How many times will I awaken?
How many sleeps do I sleep?
How many dawns lie still between this dawn
And the final sunrise?
Night has encapsuled night has encapsuled night has
Encapsuled night over and again night has encapsuled
Night over and over and over again…

Out of night
We awaken, and dawn
Is again the night that precedes
Another dawn, another night, another awakening
Lies on the other side of me…
I awaken –
Aye, I awaken…

Mantles of night, descending
Flames of light, ascending –
There is a last boundary where we touch
One more time
And then touch no more…

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

AGAIN

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Faces of strangers
Phases of enmity
A look is fuller than a book
Brevity is the soul of it

Hatred is a virus
It lies low for generations
Then breaks out with the new youth
Like a message stored in the DNA
Unbroken.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

AFTER PAIN

~ Che ~ 7 Comments

And after pain comes joy
If you let the pain have its way
And yet you conquered it

And after pain comes love
If the pain washes you truly clean
And yet you conquered it

And after pain comes life
If you walked hand in hand with pain
And conquered it

Your pain is not stronger than you
You are stronger than it
That is why it tries so hard to hurt you
A little
Because it will not last long

Wait a little longer, baby
Just a little –
Pain is our bridge.
Do you see the morningland
Waving in the distance?

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

HAWKSHEAD

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

If Heart could speak on its own
Without Brain as translator
Spoke its Intuition alone
Unmindful of intellect, that imitator
What startling things, yet unknown
Would fill the world’s books?
What silent waters, from their deep zone
Would rise as bubbling brooks?

If there were Child in Adult
Awake, seeing, hearing, speaking
If adults would spare themselves the insult
Of hiding the child they in themselves are keeping
How different every day would feel
Refreshing, natural
With the adult balancing the child’s zeal
And the child making the adult more natural…

Youth, so important
Magic Time between two times
Child and adult merge concordant
Complementing each other like natural rhymes –
What you are in your youth is what you’ll be forever
Deep within your heart –
The heart speaks its mind but once, and never
Again from that path will depart.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije (Poems inspired by the Lake District)
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