I saw loneliness tonight – she
Was sitting in the corner, in her fifties
Smoking a cigarette and watching
Laughter dancing on the young dancefloor.
For a while, her husband sat next to her
And she smiled and joked with him and
His friends. When they left to get a drink
She sat quietly in her thoughts and
As her eyes roved quietly over the
Dancefloor, our eyes met. And then I saw
Loneliness.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Why do people grow lonely
In a union warm and homely?
I have heard of walls that rise
So slowly it comes as a surprise
To find out that familiarity kills
The very intimacy that it fulfils.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
It is a story that always breaks and
Runs away from its observers
Like the baffling speed of light
No outsider ever understands what is happening
When it’s happening
Always it breaks the fabric of logic
Only the two lovers themselves, only they
Who follow the inner call of shared love
Understand the logic of magic.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Political correctness
Has fallen out of favour
Racial correctness
Is the new In-thing
The new hypocrisy
The new incarnation of evil
All you clever cowards
Claiming it’s time to be politically Incorrect
You have simply replaced one evil
With another –
Racial correctness
Cultural correctness
Religious correctness
Narrow-hearted correctness
That’s what brings in the Votes now.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Look for someone who has ambition
Then use him – or her, my dear – to block the ascent of
The one who has true ability.
For, the one with genuine ability is
The real threat to you.
I reckon someone whispered these words into
The ears of every dictator and every colonizer
Every leader and every conqueror and
Every CEO and manager, supervisor and general manager
That ever lived
Or else they would not all be doing it
So excellently.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
When a gun shouts
It sounds like a whip on crack
So why are you laying that wound
On your brother,
Brother?
You have none other than
The last one you just buried
Those graves are not for the brave
Your brother’s life is all you have,
Brother.
Soldier soldier don’t shoot
Fingerfood for thought is trigger for the unhappy
A life in exchange for a shot
And you call that a fair deal?
Poor substitute.
But they say, look here
We don’t like all these heavy words.
Give us laughter, give us comfort, give us food
Give us pride, give us a shining ring
Or, if you can, give us hope.
Someone has to get up
Someone has to get up first.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Your brother in the ghetto
Is still your brother –
He might not have attended
The same type of schools as you did
He might not have acquired
The same kind of polish as you did
He might not even know
That you’re not as different from him
As he thinks
He might think
What you think: you’ve become strangers
No. He is still your brother
And when a bullet comes in the dark
It can’t tell the difference between you and you.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
They can’t read
But they can read
The signs on the wall
They can read between the lines
When the educated are talking
They can read your thoughts
In your eyes
When you’re lying to them
They just don’t have the words
To explain that all they need
Is a seed of true knowledge planted
Into their minds when they were young.
Someone has to walk ahead
When others are looking
For someone to follow.
How many generations will fall like
Autumn leaves, wasted beauty?
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
In the ghetto
I get to see
The living me
Watching me with eyes
Wiser than the eyes watching me
Living my thousand lives
While I search in my mind for lies
With which to neutralise
The truth reflected back at me
By the other me.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
“Why doth thy finger tremble so,
O Poet, what hast thou done?
Why doth thy finger tremble so,
O Poet, what hast thou done?“
“I’ve journeyed through three human hearts
And written what I saw
I’ve voyaged into hidden parts
Unknown to me before!”
“But human hearts are fragile strung,
So why art thou so shocked?
Said human hearts are fragile strung
Why then dost thou look shocked?”
“The sun is distant, but the heat
It give scarce can be borne…
From farther yet do men’s hearts beat,
More scorching too, their scorn!”
“Wilt thou then walk away from Fate,
O Poet, wilt thou do so?
Wilt thou abandon now thy Fate,
O Poet, to flee thee woe?”
“Atlantis sunk, the Incas died,
The Pharaohs turned to sand,
But poetry outlives time and tide
And Poets will guide the land.”
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 