Once he doesn’t care anymore All the beauty in the world becomes a bore Every tender touch pinches a sore Promises of true love sound like folklore. He walks out forever through the door He totally overturns what he is living for When he has been wounded to the core Every woman now seems to him to be a whore. Fitting in with the act turns into a chore He rips off the mask which once he wore The mask his heartbreak from his heart tore And breaks away from the naive days of yore. An angel or a demon? Neither nor. Be yourself or die trying? Either or. Whatever else life may have in store He’ll carve his own way now to heaven’s shore. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
awakening
EAGLE AT HEART
Sun-burnished
The sea slit
The morning lit up
Furnished my wit
The varnished mirror beneath me crawls
And over-yonder my sun it calls
Back tarnished memory bit by bit.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
LIGHTRISE
When more than the sun rises
And more than the moon is full
When enlightenment itself materialises
Upon and within your soul
When you awaken in the deepest sense
And the light of your spirit fills your eyes
Then shall you experience
The dawn of the morning Lightrise.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
IN THE MORNING
The things we know in the morning
The moment we awaken
And from somewhere else are returning
But not yet quite retaken
By the world of thoughts that ever crowd around us
During the hours while we are fully day-conscious
Those things we know as sleep departs
Are as true as true can be
The Hour of Awakening to us imparts
The starkest clarity
It may be painful, may be pleasant
It may be quite surprising
But it is always true and doesn’t
Require verifying
Because if you did awake aright into this certainty
Events themselves will prove to you their authenticity
My thoughts are clear as sleep departs
And I see without guile
Displayed before me all those hearts
With whom I frown or smile.
————–
che chidi chukwumerije
————–
DARKLIGHT
Strike the spirit
They long for pain
The pain of breathing and moving
When the very sun begins to rain
And they die in pleasure
And feel alive again.
And to feel the sunrain
Dry and wet on soul
Burning hot
And awakening stonecold
Clarity of perception
Through a hole came the whole.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
APRIL
Her glance was taffeta
Smoothed down my trembling hands
Smoothed down my trembling hands
Oh morning glory
Oh these tremors have passed and
I’m asleep again on a Saturday morning
In the birth cradle of April.
Fresh rain, burgundy tears sprinkle sun, sprinkle dawn
Rainbows, silver and gold fingers
Then palmgreen sprouting hope hope
Then palmgreen sprouting hope.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
COURAGE AWAKENING
Shades of morning
Mantles of night ascending
Ghosts, like fears of the past,
Lay down softly to sleep at last.
Fear. Will whisper.
A thousand reasons to be a coward.
Until your inner man comes calling
The ground is so close
How come you’re still falling?
Beauty, soft kiss of dawn
Quietens you for a moment of tenderness
Before you shed your final skin
Of fear and pain
And stand up, never to crawl again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
DAWN BEFORE DAWN
The light that comes
Comes from within –
Sun, moon and stars
Are stars in your own inner film
Morning comes with distant murmurings
Trains and cars and birdsongs gurgling
Silence broken by the rain
And swallowed up in silence again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SELF-ACCEPTANCE
My whole life has been a long series of attempts to destroy my unworthy self. Only after I succeeded, did I realise what I had lost.
Love yourself. Yourself is not just ALL you have, it is WHAT you are. There is nothing else you can ever be. Don’t waste your life. You become better by growth, not by psychological self-mutilation.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 