It’s so easy to forget
Who you are
The longer you live like them
With them
Amongst them
Sleep is depth
Is debt
Is death
The greatest treasure on earth
Is memory
Spirit, it’s so easy to forget
Who you are
On Earth.
Everything seems normal
To sleepwalker.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
The beach was a friend
Whose waves like fingers
Wrapped themselves around
The hooves of the horses on
Which Kwame and I flew across wet sand
And Daddy took lost pictures
In the background, barefooted
While Mummy and Azuka
Laughed at us cheerfully.
Bar Beach on a Saturday
Long gone away.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Hands that grasped together
The bonds that heal and hold
And spun together warm threads
Into blanket against cold
And together formed fists that struck
At foes, firmly and bold
Hands that aged together, lined by
Love that never grew old.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Nation must dig deep into
The luminous garden of soul
For new spirits must incarnate
Nation must dig deep into
The forgotten regions of soul
For sleeping spirit must awake
If we don’t change inside
Nothing will change outside.
We will merely pile up academic degrees.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
I see a mountain
In the distance
A mysterious mind
Over matter
The birds that circle its heights
Like higher thoughts
That hover above a dreamer’s mind
Seeking to make contact
For oft the thoughts we think
And think are ours
Are borrowed
Upon a lazy afternoon, somewhere
In Creation.
A child sits somewhere unseen
Locked in an old body
Each time it smiles
Rainbows and rainbows of new thoughts
Surge out, unite, swing forth, to go seek out
Like-minded wonderers dreaming lazily
Upon a quiet moment, somewhere
In Creation
Blindly receiving the seeds of new thoughts
And thinking the thoughts they think
Are theirs alone
As if the mind of a dreamer
Were not a fertile garden too.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
I’m quiet tonight
Never mind that it’s morning
I’m still dreaming
I remember a friend
We had high hopes for his future
Yet he chose the Easy
Now I’m all alone
On the road we once chose together
Watching it grow longer
This pain I keep inside
Greater than death, worse than loss
Treachery’s dungeons.
If I doubted reincarnation
This life has taught me a bitter lesson
For I must come again
The work is unfinished
The cards will be reshuffled
I will come again.
Then I hear, so soft
The sounds of morning dawning
The past is over now.
Those words, those strange words
That baffle the minds of politics
Of culture and science
You can call me Fool
You can call me mad, and yet
You too will come again.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Broken bristles of bile
And a sundown smile
Was all she needed to discover
My words are quicksand
Too late. Too late. Too late. Too late.
Rough teeth, gated heart
Addicted to the back bite
All these people talking about heaven
Lying to themselves
And taking comfort in your confused belief.
But love will save me
Because I’m not a believer
That inner river bleeds me drunk
The city’s my village
What’s the big difference? Propaganda.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Some things happen but
Once
In a lifetime…
It was here, it was there
It was where?
It is where?
It is gone…
It will never return.
-che chidi chukwumerije
Stony faces
Weak arms
Biggest Guns
Emptiness.
God has turned His Face Away!
Man at Mercy of the dark
Which virgins have oiled
Their lamps?
Empty streets – stoned
Cold overnight
Sleep of death
Who is beating my heart?
Technology will cure nothing!
E-speed all the faster to communicate
Emptiness and loneliness
From me to you, you to me.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 