To be vulnerable is to be honest. To be honest is to be vulnerable. To be different is to be vulnerable to be honest. To be different is to be honest to be vulnerable. It is a strange place to be everytime No matter how many times you go there. Each time it feels different. It requires bravery everytime. Even when you‘re familiar with it Still you never get used to it. Because it is different. Everytime. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
different
STAY ON YOUR PATH
The words will still be the one
The one to articulate Silence
When we sing the praises of Silence
We do so with words
The strange bird will still be the one
The one to carry your story forward
Even though you ostracized him
He will preserve your story
When strangers rule the world.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE SINGULARITY OF EVERY
There are many things
That seem to be the same
But are not
Just like dawn and dusk
Those two strangers
Who have a way of appearing similar
And yet have never met
Or seen
Nor ever will
Nor ever be the same.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
BEING DIFFERENT
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.
SOLIDARITY WITH SELF
Your brother in the ghetto
Is still your brother –
He might not have attended
The same type of schools as you did
He might not have acquired
The same kind of polish as you did
He might not even know
That you’re not as different from him
As he thinks
He might think
What you think: you’ve become strangers
No. He is still your brother
And when a bullet comes in the dark
It can’t tell the difference between you and you.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
ECCENTRICITY
So what on earth
Is really wrong
With being an eccentric?
Nature, when you rub it
Or bring opposite poles together
Becomes electric
Perception when it expands
And touches all sources
Becomes eclectic
People when you force them
Into an unnatural Framework
Become erratic
And almost every great Invention
Or new thought
Came from an eccentric.
So tell me…
What on earth could be wrong wrong
WIth being an eccentric?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 