NO MATTER

No matter
How many times I get used,
I still can never get used
To getting used.

No matter how often
Fake people take a liking
To me, I never take a liking
To their liking.

No matter
How often I be in love,
I will never fall in love
While standing in love.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

NO HOME AWAY

I walk through the valley of pain on my own

By the time friends come I’m already gone

I am All the colours between black and brown

Call me Africa or call me Diaspora, a birded song

Fly without perching, there’s no home away from home.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

GIVING

A broken heart
is a portal
to a misplaced chart
of an immortal

A soul bleeding
is a soulful river
It is quietly leading
you to the Giver.

To get you must give
give humility
The hardest way to live
Purity, simplicity.

The Giver’s Paradise
is only for the giving
even when he cries
he is still forgiving.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

EASTER

Tear the woods open wide
It is a painting windowed in our dream
Spear not the canvas to the side
The blood waters a never-ending stream
That will move mountains on Sunday
And roll a rock downhill
Into the valley of time we chime Monday
Death is dead. Peace, be still
The innocent should never be crucified
While the guilty die on their pen
Never was indignity this undignified
Justice thus unjustified by unmanly men
The innocent will rise again
Broken the frame of your crown of lies
Sunrays that fall like drops of rain
A Spirit is born when a man dies.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

DRIFTED APART

The truth must not only be true
But it must also appear to be true -
Or it will look like a lie.

You must not only be you
But you must also act like you
Or you will feel like a lie.

A small shift
A big rift
Swift

A brief lift
A Greek gift
Drift.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

LIKE A FLOWER THINKS OF THE SUN

Think of forgiveness
Like a flower thinks of the sun
With gratitude nonetheless
For a story time once upon
For pain is the power to bless
Forevermore for if ever done
Let anguish be my shorn redress
Torn away, for Done! is foregone
Revenge and mercy both make a mess
But mercy makes the earthier one.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

TAKE YOUR PAIN

Take your pain
Don’t run from it
Again and again
Welcome it
You will gain
From the purge
And after the rain
A new you will emerge.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

BADLY

I‘m hurting so badly
It’s driving me mad
And making me sad
I’ll take the bend gladly.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

EMERGING

The more my eyes fail
The better I see
The more my knees flail
The faster I flee
And the farther I go
I thought younger was stronger
But that was a long long time ago.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

CRAVINGS

When they‘re done with you
They hate you
For showing them their darker side
And showing them how much they love it.

Never talk to them in the open
Only in secret
That‘s when they love you
That‘s where they crave it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije