That deep moment When the grass is calm The gale is spent Nature is bent On being your heart’s balm A busy butterfly Like a restless thought Flutters by Waving hi and goodbye Forget me not Forget me not. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
butterfly
WHEN THE PATH FEELS WRONG, YOU SEARCH HARDER
You might sometimes find yourself, for long periods of your earthlife, striving after the wrong things; even worse, striving via the wrong principles and means; unaware of how you got there, sometimes unaware perhaps even of whatever it was you once really wanted, and not knowing how to change back onto the right track.
This is a trick that life plays on every Seeker – to force you to light up the inner Lantern within your consciousness; for the aim of the cocoon is to turn the caterpillar into a butterfly. So too does life make you blind in order to awaken your Insight – and then, nothing can blind you anymore apart from you yourself. Sometimes the wrong path is the right path, as long as you keep on honestly and tirelessly seeking. You will find yourself.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
BUTTERFLY: BREAKING OUT OF A BROKEN HEART
It takes a long time
To forgive yourself
For not giving love back
To the person that gave it to you –
Nobody can break your heart
Only you can break your own heart
Nobody’s forgiveness can set you completely free
Until you yourself have broken out
Of your broken heart,
Like Butterly.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
INSOMNIA
THERE IS a frenzy in the air. The world is dark and bloody like an ominous sunset. The land is full of cogitation. Everybody is fired up, wired up, wound up like an electric train, toy trains on their permanently defined tracks. There is a sad desperation in their every chug and hoot, in their every wailing whistle, a longing for a freedom that will never be, must never be, because this freedom, freedom from these tracks, this prison, would mean the end of destiny, the termination of purpose and of life.
This is the continuum in which I live. A dark and dirty cocoon. But who dares to break out? Who dares risking the encountering of the recognition that, truly, all one might be is a toy e-train on toy tracks mounted on a table in the children’s playroom? Who shall risk this dare, in the hope of finding another reality, the celebration of birth of butterfly?
A longing, hard to define, was long the taproot. The root of roots and hope of hopes. The dream unremembered in the clamour of urban dawn. Generation gap after generation gap. Yawning emptiness. Your blood is much too soggy. It weighs you down and is choking you to death, dear continuum. You are more than city, more than state, more than country, more than region, subregion, continent or subcontinent, even you are more than world. You are continuum. And I hate you. Hate you for holding me, for binding me, for being an extension of me and a limitation of me. I hate you because I hate loving you. I love you but I don’t like you. I hate loving what I don’t like. I hate hating you. I wish I could stop hating you and start loving loving you. I am afraid of you. You make me sick. You make my heart beat with a deep quietness that I know to be peace.
Why? Continuum of urban disconnect, why? When the sun rises you will wake me up from my insomnia and refuel me with your frenzy. I flee into the deep.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
TENDERLY
I hold you tenderly
Like a precious thought
I sparingly share
Only with strangers
For they know not its worth
Will not rob me of it or its meaning or
Crush it to death like a writer
Crushes an idea in his mind –
Might be a butterfly
Might be a petal
Might be a story that would have changed minds –
Gone, unwritten, unspoken, unshared.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
LOOK DEEPER
We are so strongly influenced
By the form of what we see
That we lose sight of a sense
Of what its true content could be
Who would ever guess
That in a cocoon sleeps a butterfly
Or that the greatest devil of all
Looks like an angel in the sky?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
KEEP THE FAITH
There will be brief sudden moments
Of big aching dreams, they will
Tear you out of darkest despair
Remind you of the throbbing urge
That is your second heart.
An unexpected warm sunny day in winter
That seems to say: Shivering spark, I am
Summer’s promise sent ahead of time
An emissary of hope, here to remind
You to keep the faith.
Strengthened by quietness
You face the dark, and you laugh
And you say: Deep, you are my cocoon
The womb of midnight wonder, from which
I shall emerge, your secret butterfly.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A BUTTERFLY SHOULD LEAVE ITS COCOON BEHIND
I love you Baby
But sometimes Love
Is not enough to make Lohengrin stay.
Don’t knock on the door
Of the Unknown, if you don’t
Want to be overtaken by the Unknown.
But if you must, you must
Even when the line you have crossed
Is the boundary of trust.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 