IT’S A HUMAN HEART

It’s winter
You’ll have warmer days
And you’ll have colder days
But they’ll all be cold.

It’s a human heart
You’ll have clearer days
And you’ll have uncertain moments
But still, be bold.

It’s an Earth life
You came to cry
And you came to laugh
And maybe grow old.

The people you love the most
Will cause you the most pain
And yet they’re the only ones
Your heart will want to hold.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

AGAIN

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

THE DAILY TRAINRIDE

In the skyline grey
Memory hung
The future gone astray
Emptiness stung
Hung with reality in the greying city
The dying trees, the loveless pity
Duplicity and winding and twisting, reflecting
The beast in the best of the robots erecting
Their concrete phalli, their bull’s I’s, to scratch the sky
The insatiable itch, impotent ambition, try and try
And try as you might, your might is the limp cloud
The wilted grass, the lonely office, the empty crowd
The quiet madness, the gory glory
The daily trainride into another same story
The casual business of getting by
Between yesterday and tomorrow
A moment of reflection, gone, a sigh
Of something neither joy nor sorrow.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

ROUGH FRUITS

I need everything
And I need dearth
I squeeze the leaven
To open the girth
My hour is eleven
Narrow, not straight
Rough sun having
Your fun on my mirth
When you burn my raven
Rekindle my hearth
I need Heaven
But I also need Earth.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.