How can that be?
All this intimacy
And still not happy
All these people
All these hearts
And still so lonely
All these words
All these conversations
And your life still has no meaning
When you’re not with the one you really need
And all that sex
Is just the expression
Of unhappiness.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Blue planet
Becomes greenhouse
Too little room
For blossoming big mushroom
Acid rain
Too many old thoughts undecomposed
Poisoning today’s poison
Wait to exhale
The greenhouse is sweating
Hold that thought
Oxygen rapes carbon dioxide
CO2 shits O2; O3 too
Thermometer measures rising frenzy
Barometer cooling love.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Ashes to ashes…
Dust to dust…
Spirit to spirit…
Have mercy, o Holy Ghost!
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Another anniversary of the day I beheld for the last time the noble countenance of my father. Then we closed the coffin and confered his cloak into the warm arms of Mother Earth. And set the spirt free for the Flight back Home. Always in my fondest Memories, Daddy dear… 22.5….
(Pic: my first day in Boarding School, Sep 1995 – King’s College. Lagos)
The ice
Spice of my life
Has thawed
Underneath my paw.
As I claw myself back to life
All I need from you
Is a splice
Of sacrifice.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Wanted!
Dead or alive
Hunted!
Run for your lives
Haunted!
The earth is a house of mirror
The hammer of horror
One in four mammals under threat
That was a death sentence
Crouching in the park
Lunging out of the dark
Four in four mammals under pressure
Self-preservation
Undaunted!
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Set the trap
In the taste
In the tastes.
They’ll eat out of your hand
And see you
And seek you
In everything, in every woman, in every land.
Make them enemies of their father
They’ll see him
They’ll fight him
They’ll hate him in every man
Even in themselves.
Crown their hearts
With their father’s good image
They’ll revere him, uphold him, replicate him
In themselves, their sons too, their world, the world.
Power is subtle
When subtly broken
Or subtly woken.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
It’s a planet
Because it’s all about
The plant
Each and every one of them
The way life planned it
So what’s our plan now?
Bring back the plant to planet man
Solution in resolution
A planet in a plan
Universe in verse – reversed.
The planet lungs to breathe again
Plants expiring on planet man
The screen is green
Reality ours to imagine and make
Plant a good seed
Breathe out
Greenscene is backdrop
Every drop will wrench your thirst
Drop back
Because it’s melting
It’s a planet
We did not plan it
And yet we dammed it
But it’s all about the plant
If it’s a good seed, plant it.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
When blood like a river
Attendeth my soul
When mirrors
Turn backwards and cold
Whatever my lot
Let the past work away
It is well, it is well
With my goal.
Out of hell, burning bell
Wring my soul, ring my soul
Though we fell, now ’tis well
With our goal.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
* inspired by Spafford’s 19th century eponymous hymn.
A moment of poems passes away
And the nostalgia doth arise
Always the same and always, I pray
That it again’ll tomorrow materialise
Cross my path, call of heaven
Breath of heaven, touch of heaven
Cross my path again, from heaven
Whisper someone, touch me, whisper, free me
Break me loose from the cycle of words
I want the Other Poem.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
I still think about you
Still remember your heart
Special it was, like a house of virtue
And, like all things special, it did up and depart
But the longing, the softening, the striving , the yearning
Some start the downing, some start the burning
But you by-passed the normal poles, and noiselessly, soft
Noiselessly opened and bore me aloft.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 