VANISHING

Don’t come back after I’ve got used to your absence
Your absence has become your strongest presence
If you return too late you’ll only find yourself gone
Replaced by memory, you’ll be the invisible one.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

SONG OF RENEWAL

Once you burst the bubble,
Spare yourself the trouble;
Nothing that you do
can ever bring it back again.

The bubble had its season,
The bursting had its reason;
Their veracity’s value
Is not diminished by your pain.

The past looks real but isn’t,
The gift is in the present;
It makes you transform You -
The only goal you can truly attain.

Metamorphosis is life’s pleasure,
It’s a treasure beyond measure;
It makes you constantly renew
Your focus on your spiritual lane.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

CHANGE COMPLETELY

What a difference a year can make -
Even half-a-year of experiencing can remake
Mind and soul, body and spirit completely.

How quickly the present becomes the past,
It never ceases to amaze me.
I look at pictures from just a week ago last
And it’s a different life already,
A different time, a different world, a different me,
A different you - my view has changed completely.

Everything always Happens quickly,
You take it immediately or you lose it swiftly.
When the seasons change, they change completely.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

MOVE!

Move! You have to move!
Always you have to move move move!
Change change change! Move
And move again and again
Keep moving keep changing your lane
Joy and pain sunshine and rain playing and praying
And always adjusting and recalibrating
And moving and moving and moving
And constantly growing and improving.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WHAT YOU FELT YOU WOULD FEEL

When the worst happens,
The thing you fear the most,
A strange thing happens:
Your fear becomes a ghost.
It was never real,
It was imagination,
It was expectation -
What you felt you would feel.

But aren’t we spirit? Pain is the hand
That forces us to grow and to understand
There’s nothing ‘twixt the sea and the sand
That can’t be healed by spirit’s magic wand.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TRANSIENCE

You cannot reproduce the past
What is gone is gone
The present was never built to last
A moment later, it is done.
Over and done with.
All that’s left to reminisce on
Will be legend and myth.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

UNMISSING A PERSON

You know, when you do not
Want to stop missing a person, but…

One morning you rise
and go through the day and only
In the evening do you realise
That today you forgot to be lonely

And in that moment when you remember
That person, you wait for the familiar pain…
But as sure as August breaks into September
The ache is gone, you’ll never feel it again.

You know, when you do Not
Want to stop missing a person…
Because missing that person
Is the only thing you’ve still got -
But…

One day even that leaves you too.
Yes, even you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TIME MATTERS

If there were no time
There would be no pleasure
For there would be no experiencing,
No piling up of inner treasure,
No maturing, no developing,
No struggle against which to measure
Growth, delicious, ever unfolding,
For eternity gained is the time spent.
If there were no time,
If Everything happened in one moment,
There would be no rhyme.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

CHANGE CHANGES CHANGE

There is something about change
Once it starts, it is irreversible
The inexorable march is strange
Like a Divine verdict incontestable
You see it happening yet you cannot stop it
When you try to stop it you only develop it
Even faster and make yourself expendable.

There is something about change
It is is surreal. Unreal. It is strange.

Change changes the parameters of change
And never changes in the same way.
Change changes change
But never changes it in the same way.
And never stops changing.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TIME DOES NOT CHANGE THINGS

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.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije