Poetry

DISTANCE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

I have a longing for intimacy
Not satisfied by sex
A craving for voyeurism
Not quenched by porn
A yearning for universal entanglement
Not gratified by orgies
And a need for intense borderlessness
Not staked by perversity
What is it?

I have an itch for mystification
Not calmed by lying
A desire for friction
Not stilled by confrontation
A propensity for destruction
Not quelled by murder
And a burning for escape
Not silenced by suicide
What is it?

It’s like I am separated from myself
And watch myself through a window
And everything that I do
Is actually being done by my shadow
While I wait for something real
Really really real.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

SOLIDARITY IN VICISSITUDE

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What’s the point? A good start,
A bad fall. Bright sunshine, broken
By patches of night –
Hunger, loneliness, all that you have
Is your soul and the spirit
In it –
You.

It’s not the door cringing,
It’s the stomach wringing…
It’s not a statue,
It’s a lonely person…
Be good to me, brother man.
Sister woman.

Be good to me.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

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

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

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