UNDERSTANDING VALUES

How foreign is a foreigner
In a land of foreign values
If the values of the foreign
Are native to him?

How rightful are a native’s rights
In a land of prayer and righteousness
If he claims for himself the right
To deny an unbeliever his human rights?

Democracy is a car – if you insist
That they exchange their horse for your car
How can you stop them from roughly driving the car
Like they rode their horse, out into the wild?

Religion is a house – if you insist that they
Abandon nature and make your house their home
How can you stop them from inviting their old nature
Into your eternal rigid walls?

Who knows the answer?
Religion doesn’t know the answer
Politics doesn’t know the answer
Only really human beings know the answer.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

SAX TIGHTLES

image
Four example
Camel Lion
Your dreamy dark eyes
Bottomless pools of wanting
Crow’s bones
Lord of the thighs
Unhappy keys, open me
A bright queer inner light-flash
Sometimes camel, sometimes lion and me
Waterbottle
Just fooling around
Sex and Sax
Keep it tight, yeah that’s just alright

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

SLOW

Open slowly
Don’t show it all
Too fast –
Pause… a little more… pause… a little more
Draw a little breath
Every change is death
And rebirth –

– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.

SPACE

Distance
Brought me closer to you than
Romance
Ever did or ever could

Distance
Is more intimate than nearness
Substance
Needs space to come together

Distance
Is at the heart of our closeness
Long live the resistance
That makes the current of love flow.

– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.

DEMYSTIFICATION

I did not want to talk to her.
It was enough, this distance
Was a canvas on which I could
Her Beauty admire, enjoy my desire
In its state of perfection
But, oh!, I spoke to her. She broke
The mirror in which I admired the reflection
Of my perfect her.

Who is this shell
Talking to, touching, lying beside me?
Falling fast like a rock that
Was lifted too high for its own good.
The moon is beautiful
Only from afar.
Before you demystify her, stop
And take one last look at what you’re about to lose.

– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.

I SAW LONELINESS

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.

FAMILIAR INTIMACY

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.

ELOPERS

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.

AGAINST POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS

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.

DIVIDE AND RULE

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.