SELF-RECONSTRUCTION

~ Che ~ 9 Comments

If you of a barren eager day switch on the television, assuming that NEPA has provided electricity, and observe the movements of those dancers called politicians, you will before you know it begin to dance along.

If you of a quiet sleepless night switch on your memory, assuming your heart is strong enough to bear this, and remember the days of your emotional sighs and bonds, you will before you know it begin to yearn again for those things for which you have always yearned the most deep within your heart.

And if you of a broken moment in time, broken open, long again for me, I promise you that I will be there, sweetheart. But you must long from the deepest part of you, the part you kept hidden when you told me all those unnecessary lies. And you will, before you know it, have outgrown me and my poems.

It’s not me you love, my dear, you were merely enraptured by the poet in me – and I am a poet.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

DURCHZUG

~ Che ~ 8 Comments

Ich habe oft den Eindruck
Der Zug redet zu mir
Von Station zu Station
Was murmelt er?

Er summt, er grollt
Er gähnt und flüstert
Mahnt und schimpft
Neckt und tröstet

Erzählt von Vergangnem
Erkläret Aktuelles
Ein Prophet ist er auch
Er kündet alles –

Vom Mensch und von Technik
Von Einsamkeit
Gruppenseelen, Einzelgängern
Ungeteiltem Leid

Von Angst und Neugier
Und jeder Art von Menschenwesen
Von Fremdsein und Fremdschämen
Und Fremd- und Fremdes-lesen

Davon, daß die Reise
Ein Ausruhen ist
Von dem, was Du tust
Wenn Du bei Dir bist

Vom Klassenunterschied
Gesellschaftsleben
Alles hat einen Preis
Daneben.

Je mehr ich zu höre
Desto weniger versteh ich
Im Kopf
Doch seelisch, geistig

Wachse ich
Auf Erden leben ist nur Dichtung
Ausstieg, ob links ob rechts
In Fahrtrichtung.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

AGAIN

~ Che ~ 8 Comments

The punishment for being brave
Is having nothing to do
But be brave –
A tidal wave is rising in my soul.

The reward for being brave
Is having to do nothing
But be brave –
A tidal wave is crashing in my soul.

She warmed her cold tongue with
The flaming words of a passionate poet and
Lashed a gutter of decadent lava on
My soul.

Yet I told her still the truth
Again and again and again
And again and again, again
And again.

– che chidi chukwumerije

REMINISCING THE CHANGE

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

What holds people together and transforms animosity into love, distrust into cooperation, disunity into lively oneness? What melts the old barriers and creates new ones? What overcomes us and flows over us? What ever came over us? What is our goal? What can make us agree where once we disagreed?

A force, like a violent wind, whips us away from the old way and whisks us into the new. All we have to do is try. Things end, things begin anew, old things go, new things come, we shall live if we are ready to change.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

WHERE SHE IS, HOME IS

~ Che ~ 7 Comments

Where she is is home,
Hope, I shall no longer roam
Any further, she’s my world,
My home, around me curled,
Unfurled, wanting me bad,
I, this never-ending fairy-lad.
Home, where she is is
Home, hope, land of bliss, is
Where I stay, I roam no more,
I return home and want no more.

– che chidi chukwumerije

KERN

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

Fern
Ist mein Kern

Fern
Wie ein Stern

Gern
Bleibt mein Kern

Fern
Wie ein Stern.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

SOMETHING’S MISSING

~ Che ~ 7 Comments

I don’t know if you’ve heard
There is a land where girls were stolen
Kidnapped it’s called in sociopolitical speak

That land happens to be my country
Those girls another set of casualties
In a war of religion and education

Let’s just call it a war on humanity
The candles are going out
From one country to the next

Some swear the second world war is not yet over
Others boast the cold war is far from done
Meanwhile an old war has long begun

Some call this the third world war
The last one apparently Nostradamus encrypted
For sure it is a religious war on faith

Everyday it opens up a new field of battle
Now it has picked on my country too
And made her the new local theater of a global scourge

But how do you win a religious war?
By killing, or by forgiving?
By retaliating or by reconciling?

It is a philoshical puzzle
A paradox of semantics
In which real people die everyday.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

YOU WILL NOT SEE THE SUN YET

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

After the Still of the Night, if you are listening, you will notice that the birds have begun to twitter, the dogs have started to bark, the cocks to crow. Looking out the window, you will notice that the sky is a tinge less dark and the stars and moon, though clearly visible still, strangely are fast fading too. You will not see the sun yet, but a stranger within you will tell you that the sun is stirring somewhere over an eastern horizon, and the world is waiting with a heart full of wonder, holding its breath, and every yawn is an awakening not a retiring. A quiet energy begins to brew, like a yearning.

Opening your heart, you will perceive that the heavenly song, echoing still on within you, retreating, has faded quietly quietly away again. And, your open heart still open, you will perceive that the harsher vibrations of an embattled intellectual species, human by name, are surging out once more – through windows, doors, walls and hearts and reawakening chaotic minds, through opening unseeing eyes and resettling restless souls, bodies crashing densely out of bed, self-locked plans and plots in mind, they prepare to explode upon the planet, yes, ready and about to punish a guiltless world again with another day of desperate madness starting now just when nature and the natural world would so deeply like to smile the smile of dawn.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THE HIDDEN FEATHER

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

The hidden feather
There and not there
Fluttering, silent, soft
Bearing a great thing aloft.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

SAFETY

~ Che ~ 9 Comments

What fear is it that colonises us as we advance and infects us with the thirst for safety? Why, how does it conquer us? Why do we yield to the fear of the unknown? Were we always seeking the valley and never the mountain-peak? Was this always our secret goal? Or did we fall somewhere, and hide thereafter behind a smile and a serious frown or the line in-between, shutting our eyes carefully so that the world would not be bothered much by the sight of the decaying of our most cherished dream?

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.