BEING DIFFERENT

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UNRAVELLING THE mystery that is my own soul, I pondered and sought; I wondered about my beginning. Woman and man in a garden. Which garden? East or west? Home is best, they say.

So I went home into my spirit-man and discovered an a different person dwelling within, staring back at me with my own face but not my own eyes.

“Different person,” I asked him, “Who are you and what are you doing inside my heart?”

But he only returned my gaze without giving an answer, and I sensed that I must find the answer myself. Myself? But who is myself?

The mystery took shape, deepened, arose. I wandered from pole to pole. But each time I thought I had found my goal, I saw the different person inside my heart again, looking back at me with my own face but not with my own eyes.

I wanted to scream, but my heart rejected this. I lay me down to sleep, but sleep ejected me. So on and on I wander and sojourn, on and on I go, seeking to unravel this mystery that is simply my very own self.

And each time I think I have found the answer, I see him again, a different person inside my soul, staring back at me with my face but not with my eyes.

Who are you, I wonder, you stranger in my soul?

What are you, why are you, so different, so alien, so silent, so bold?

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

MÄRZ

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Der Wald ist wild mit nackten Bäumen,
Finger, Hände tausendmal
Der Schnee ist weg, ein Raum voller Träumen
Macht seinen weg zurück ins Tal.
Et al, et al.

Zwischen Raum und Raum liegt kurze Zeit
Liegt Bitterkeit, liegt Tapferkeit
Und starkes Öffnen, und Mühe
Und Ruhe – – – und nun, blühe…

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

A THOUSAND ETERNITIES

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I see the sun rising
The horizon is no longer far
We have met each other halfway
The horizon is now the road.

The smell of your breast
Is a miracle
The touch of your breath
Is a poem

That ceases never to enchant
The undulating sands beneath which
My desert is overpowered
By your thousand flowers…

I am born anew
When you gently wake me up
In the night
Just to look into my eyes…

Heaven.

Heaven be your name
And though memoryless we wander
Far away in this blue grass under
The heavens,

Yet you pull me up where I see you
Calling me, reminding me, admonishing me
With your eyes in the middle
Of the night.

Heaven be our home
A thousand eternities from now
Far Beyond yonder horizon
We see.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THE MAGIC WAND

~ Che ~ 5 Comments

Once upon a time

A magician turned
Himself into a magic wand

And turned his magic wand
Into himself.

There they go
The magician and his wand.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

PEACEFUL SANDS, QUIET HANDS

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

Sometimes too
It is calm, the sand
A creamy caressing
My regular progressing, breathing
Like quiet sleep at night.

Peace is like that hand
That cool palm upon my racing heart
Cooling cooling me down, cooling
Me down
A very quiet moment
Sometimes I understand
The tracks that tears once marked down
The shifting desert sands – the sands
Shift and shift, but the tracks remain
Visible from my aeroplane

Pain and more pain over and over again
Makes you quieter, richer in the end.
It’s only peace that lasts that long –

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

EVENING

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A dog is barking higher up
On the mountain
A worried sounding woof
Every few seconds
I wonder if someone is missing again

Down in the valley there is a train
That rushes past. It sounds like
A river every few minutes
Carrying someone’s dreams into
Another person’s thoughts

I’m trying not to pay attention to the
Conversation taking place beside me
The emotions are strong
Father and daughter gently tying
Up the memories of years past

Just like I waited six days
To finish this poem
So they also waited all these years
To finally say, at the departure, I love you
Please forgive me.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

BOATRIDE ON ULLSWATER

~ Che ~ 10 Comments

Boatride on Ullswater

A life I’ve lived before?
Or just a summer lore?
These Cumbrian hills that float past me
Fade away, misty, like a memory

If greens could speak of all they hold
Unbroken sap, unspoken, old
Unwoken, untapped, a silent audience
Events absorbed in quiet clairaudience

What tales untold of eras lost
Would now unfold, unthawed of frost
Unbound by dust; behold, forever green
The mist has parted as though it had never been

Ullswater, whose water first watered your past
Whose feet were those that were the last
To tread that dry ground that is now your wet floor
Before that time vanished foreverevermore?

The boatride, like a gentle slide, into a strange intuition
A short sad season of startling fruition
Goodbye again, Watervalley, deep within your heart
Remember still my footsteps, there they did start

Mist and misty, mistier than thought
Misty mysteries yet they are not.
A heart is a storehouse of long forgotten memories
That sometimes arise cloaked as imagined stories

What do I have more precious than my heart,
My past’s library, my future’s chart.
Silently we walk, simple human beings
Yet mightier each than the sum of all worldly things.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
(One of my Lake District poems)

35,000 FT. ABOVE TAMANRASSET

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Is that sea or sand
Out of which the jagged
Jaggered, the daggered mountains
Arise?

A sea of sand
A limitless band beneath my eyes
A voiceless voiceless sea of cries
The mountains and the desert.

I fly away, I don’t return
A heart, I beat, within a metalbird
I sit and stare
At the weight of all the thoughts that I bear
World without end.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

GO EASY ON LOVE

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Only the one you love
Can make you feel small
And vulnerable

Go easy on love
Like a fresh leaf awakening
Let your every touch be thoughtful

I die when you kill me
I sigh when you kill me
I cry when you kill me

I have no shield against your thrust
Look into my eyes before you strike me dead.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

LIEBESKUMMER

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

Ich möchte wieder sterben
Nochmals so tot sein
Wie ich es war
Bis deine Augen mich zum Leben lockten

Wer hat dir das Recht gegeben
Mir das Atmen bei zu bringen
Ohne mich vorher zu warnen
Die Luft sei knapp?

Was mache ich überhaupt hier
In einem Gespräch ohne Vertrauen
Wo Lebendiges sich tot stellt
Totes unsere Denkfelder bevölkert?

Und dennoch – jetzt wo ich wieder lebe
Wie schön ist es, nach Luft zu schnappen
Zu lachen, zu weinen, nach zu denken
Schlaflose Nächte wieder zu leiden.

Ich zog aus dem Schlafzimmer
Für eine Nacht ins Wohnzimmer
Wachte um vier auf und las deine WhatsAppnachricht
Come back, I miss you!

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije