Poetry

EXERTION IS SELF-PRESERVATION

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Sometimes you have to be humble
And accept help when you’re down
But sometimes you have to be proud
And reject help, and help yourself

The first will save you in an emergency
And steady you for one day
The second will prepare you for eternity
And save you from extinction

Adversity is the friend of development
Challenge is the wake up call of genius
Obstacles are the partner of survival
Life’s true wish is to awaken us

Our time in this world will end one day
Father Sun and Mother Earth
Were just a temporary bridge God built
To teach us how to walk.

Endless Aid is a silent Killer
It is worse than AIDS and worse than Ebola
If you want God’s help along the way
First you have to be walking upon the way

The way of search and of exertion
For exertion alone brings self-preservation
Not help, not aid, not running away
Because you can’t run away from yourself.

Humility and pride are not mutually exclusive
This pride is not the synonym of vanity
For when you become too proud to take it
You humble yourself and learn how to make it.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

GOOGLE GLASSES

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We all become google’s spy
Each of us a pupil of its all-seeing eye
Using us to watch us
In deepest privacy it will touch us
We no longer need to surf
To deliver data to big brother
Just look cool in their camera glasses
And you become their agent undercover
Sorry 007 it’s no longer for your eyes only
Everybody’s licensed to spy on society
On Google-majesty’s secret service.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

FORTIFYING THE BASE

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We might not inspire the heart
Behind every new pair of curious eyes
To new thoughts or new resolutions
But we can reinforce ourselves
In that which we already know and do
And that is as good a reason
As any other
To write into the book of life.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

THE HEART OF HUMANITY

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With love we should call our children
So that with love they will come –
With love we should welcome our children
So that with love they will glow –
With love we should rear our children
So that with love they will grow –
With love we should release our children
So that with love they will go forth
And repeat the same process
With love –

Love is the only thing that makes us human –
Love is the most fundamental thing
That we should transfer from generation to generation
Through mankind –
Love is the progenitor, propagator and preserver
Of the HUMAN race –
Without love we are nothing.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

CHERISHED TIMES

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The end is always hard.
Who can part
With the scene of his true living?
We spend our lives dying –
If ever we did anywhere anytime
For a moment live,
Who can with this moment part
From this scene depart
Without a tear?

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

THE PATH OF HONOUR

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Even when you are down
Stay upon the path of honour
And when you are up too
Forget not the path of honour

It is the safeguarding of humanity
The preservation of human nature
Each time you play fair and justly
Regardless of whether it will bring you
Success or failure.

It is not only by joining the WWF
That you can save an endangered species –
Look inward; and make your contribution
By preserving the human in you.

Is there no honour in sports anymore?
Was there never any honour in politics?
To apparel one’s self in the appearance of victory:
Is this worth every means?
When we win like this, who has lost?
Is it not humankind?

The victory of money, power, praise
Upon the path of dishonorable ways
Will haunt humanity’s last days –
It has weakened us
And we have acquired the habit
Of abandoning humanity
Each time we want to achieve our goals.

But you: Deeply observe the dying species
And reflect upon the path of honour
That it still refuses to walk.
The path of honour: Walk this way.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

ONE FRIEND

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If a true friend is gold, are they poor that have no friends? Or rich by default, for peace of mind is also the lot of the lonely who is spared the irony of the laughter and companionship of false friends?

How often have we met with a friend and parted from a stranger a short while later? In these days of sad revolutions and mixed allegations, of spying and cyber double lives, of migration without integration, of hospitality without sincerity, of religious justice without religious love, of racial regrouping, gender re-evaluation, and social hardening, and of eternal unchanging vices; if you have one friend, just one friend, one true friend, then you have something more precious than silver and gold.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

NOT MY EARTHLY, BUT MY HEAVENLY FATHER

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What binds me to my earthly father is
Love, duty, gratitude, respect and admiration.

What binds me to my Heavenly Father is
Eternal life,
Eternal gratitude,
Eternal purpose,
Eternal faithfulness here and everywhere,
Now and forever.

Not my earthly – but my Heavenly – Father.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

BUT TWICE IS NOT ENOUGH

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The heart rejoices twice:
When it laughs and when it weeps

The heart flames twice
When it loves and when it hates

The heart greets twice
When it meets and when it parts

The heart is birthed twice:
When it’s born and when it passes on.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

IF THE PEOPLE CHANGETH NOT

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If you wake up one morning
And hear a bird out there
Sing a song you’ve heard before
But can’t remember where
Close your eyes and remember
The dream you’re waking from
And you’ll find yourself again
In a beautiful kingdom

Where the things you really feel
Are the things that you say
And it’s no big deal
To stand by what you say
And the people passing by
Are exactly as they seem
And they lift their country high
‘Cause they’re true to its dream

Then you wake up from the dream
And go into your world
And meet the opposite
Of what your dreams hold
Join the people, form a line
Queue up in the sun
Cast your votes for someone who
You hope has the wisdom

That the things she really felt
Are the things that she said
And the promises he spelt
Are the path that he’ll tread
And that when she passes by
She will be what she seems
And he’ll lift the country high
By working out her dreams

But the years they slowly pass
And the things hardly change
Sadly sadly ’cause the people
Are all still the same
Truth be told it makes no difference
Which of them the leader be
If the people changeth not
Well neither will their country

So pick your brooms and sweep your streets
And go to work on time
You may laugh at my simple words
But you’d be very surprised
That it’s just such little things
That have tied us down
Oh my people we’re the ones
Who give a face to our town

So the things we really feel
Are the things that we should say
It should be no big deal
To stand by what we say
And the people passing by
Should be just what they seem
And we lift our country high
‘Cause we work out our dream.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.