Time doesn’t change things, they stay as they are. Events change things. Experiences change things. Things change things. Not time. Time only changes the outer appearance of the form of things.
Sometimes a thing that seems like it will last forever only lasts a short time and then changes, because the thing or event that will change it met it early.
While sometimes an other thing that seems flimsy and ephemeral stays unchanged for eternities, because the thing or experience that will change it has not yet met it.
Never join the crowd
Let your silence be loud -
Never yield to the crowd
Let your humility be proud -
The opinion of the crowd
Is a blindfold, a shroud -
We’re all parts of a crowd,
But each with a spirit endowed.
Don’t lose yourself in the crowd
Because when you were allowed
To come into being, you vowed
To become an individual, unbowed.
Che Chidi ChukwumerijePoems from the inner river
You just assume it’s true
Because it’s native to you
You just assume it‘s true
That my blue is your blue
But my blue is really very red
rises like blood rose to my head
While your blue is green instead
the leafy verdure of a flower bed
Neither your blue nor mine
Is truly blue or azure or divine
The blues we see are but in line
With our maturity, depth or shine
Yet you simply assume it’s true
Because yours is native to you
You assume that I’m seeing blue
Just because it looks blue to you.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Sex is secondary
Mission is primary
It is not who shares your bed
but who shares your path you should wed
Or you’ll suffer the aftermath.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Why was I born? Why were you born?
Into this Earth.
My birthday always makes me think. This year more than ever, I don‘t know why. The questioning thought: Everything I‘ve done in the last 48yrs, have they in any way really fulfilled the reason WHY I WAS BORN? Or have I up until now, in a deep subtle way, just been wasting my time? For I was not born in order to celebrate that birth annually. Viewed logically, that‘s a senseless feedback loop – unless augmented, nay, superseded, by a PURPOSE – and the fulfilment of that purpose – of my birth into this earth.
49 years ago, I was not here. I was not a part of this daily hustle and bustle, getting into cars and busses, voting in elections, raising kids, being earthy and doing the earthly. So, where was I? And why did I come here? Where were you before you were born? And why did you come here?
Every year the certainty that I‘m closer to my earthly death, to my departure. I just feel it, so strongly. That reduced distance. It‘s not just a piece of general knowledge that we all have: Everybody dies one day. Yes we all know this. But it is more than this. It‘s also a solid emotional perception, a physical presence that comes closer, that you can feel when you close your eyes and pay attention.
My birthday makes me think, not just of birth, but also of death.
My brother, Kwame, aged 19, died on my 21st birthday. It was a few weeks before his own 20th birthday. The person closest to me. Why did he come? Did he or did he not fulfil the purpose of it? And then he was gone again. It‘s a date we share, in life and death.
Life existed before we were born into it. It was perfect, already. Before we were created, Creation was already formed and perfect. This realisation makes me think and there is no end to this reflection. Just a clear line of perception – an intuitive perception:
You are not without a reason and not without a purpose, unless you fail – consciously or unconsciously – to discover that reason and that purpose; and then to – deliberately or instinctively – fulfil that reason and that purpose.
It‘s a serious and thought-provoking business meeting your birthday again, and still not knowing why. Or knowing if you’re fulfilling why, as best as you can. Year after year.
I don‘t need to celebrate my birthday. I need to reflect upon it.
Every global problem comes with special extra dimensions of evil for Black people.
Blacks being prevented from escaping war in Ukraine. Thrown out of busses and trains. Refused entry at the Ukraine-Poland border. Many of them students. Some of them women with children.
BUT everybody wants easy access to the minerals under African soil.
War brings out the Ugliness – and the Truth – in humanity.
I feel pain. Because you want to help others. But does anybody want to help you?
You want to show solidarity with others. But no one wants to show solidarity with you.
The end result of life should be happiness. If you live a long and “fulfilled” life, and yet at the end you are full of sadness and uncertainty – what was the point?
I don’t know what or where Paradise is – but if it’s not a synonym for Happiness, what’s the point in making it the destination of your travels?
As simple as it may sound, the aim of life is to be happy – nothing more. The difficult exercise along the way is finding your happiness without unfairly or willfully impeding the happiness of another.
Human society needs a healthy mix of capitalism and socialism. Too much of either one has always proven to be bad.
Human society needs a healthy mix of faith and doubt. Too much of either one has always proven to be bad.
The world needs a healthy balance between “I” and “we”. Too much of either one has always proven to be bad.
We divide ourselves into “left” and “right”; and then we forget that left and right are the two legs on which that which is Human walks, balanced. They are not adversaries of one another; they are complementary to one another. Each must tolerate the other, for the sake of all.
Every shift in form takes a bit of attention away from content as the consciousness or subconscious seeks through a reappraisal of form, and an attempted understanding of the reason for the shift, to glimpse a hint at the current nature of content. So, the understanding of content – on its way from itself to itself – takes a detour via attention to and understanding of form.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 