FORGET IT

How humility can guide you
To find yourself if you let it -
How anger can ride you 
To death if you won’t forget it -

Forget it, it’s done and gone,
Your pain is the healing kind -
When you lost her, you won
A deeper heart, a higher mind.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

HEARTS NEED TIME

The heart needs a long time
To understand that someone is gone.
Decades after the death bells chime,
The heart still waits for the loved one
To come back home.

The heart needs a long time
Because hearts are built for eternity.
Loving is more violent than crime,
You’ll be sentenced to immortality
As you wander and roam
Trying to come back home.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

REPEAT

It’s like 10,000 years away
It’s like you went away
On that fateful day
It repeats itself everyday.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

MANY STORIES

You have enemies you don’t know,
They get to your friends behind your back.
Those friends whose friendship was hollow
Succumb to them and join in their attack.

You have friends you don’t know,
They‘re there for you when you need them most.
They fight your fight, share your sorrow,
Rejoice with you, sometimes invisibly like a ghost.

You are not and never alone,
You are a part of many stories and memories;
Your life is an enrichment of someone else’s own
And is enriched by others’ and their testimonies.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THAT KIND OF LOVE

How can someone
Love someone so much?
Is it possible? Once upon
A time there was such.

And betrayal couldn’t make the love go away,
It only opened a wound that would forever stay
And questions yearning to find answers some day.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WHAT’S HIDDEN IN THE SOIL

How something so good
Can just suddenly spoil
You would be so surprised
What’s hidden in the soil.

How success and fulfilment
Can defy time and toil
You would be so mortified
What’s hidden in the soil.

How the hand that loved
Can suddenly recoil
You would be so horrified
What’s hidden in the soil.

The human heart is a garden,
A kitchen, a fertile soil
And strange things happen
When things come to the boil.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

LIGHT TRAVEL

Travel light
For the road has all you need
But pack right -
The important things - and Godspeed.
Have a good flight.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

FAKE

Dull ache

Mistake

Deep fake

Heartbreak.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

ON MY MIND

People are illusions
in our mind
Emotional intrusions
Never mind
Out of sight
is not out of mind
Day and night
You’re on my mind.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

ASSUMPTION IS THE FILTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Realising you’ve been deceived
Is very hard to believe
Because it looked so real
How it made you feel
But that is the first rule of deception
It must never look like deception
When you look at a wolf clothed as a sheep
You don’t see a wolf clothed as a sheep
You see a sheep. Everything around you
Could be a cover created to confound you.
Our wishes, insecurities, vanities, memories,
Propensities - they all block our senses.
Assumption is the filter of consciousness.
Worse, presumption. Everything is a dress,
And who or what is wearing each dress
You will learn by experience as you progress.
But as you become more knowledgeable
You ironically also become more gullible.
You are stunned, as you learn and grow,
To realise there’s still so much you don’t know.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river