I looked around and thought
No, this too is not my home
It’s time to move on
Then a voice from inside me asked
Where then is your home?
How long will you keep on
Moving on?
And I answered: I do not know.
I do not remember my home
But when I get there
I will know it –
That is why I keep on moving on.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Music made me
A bird saved me
A smile undid me
A woman slew me
A friend betrayed me
And I dug myself out of the Grave.
A wound bled me
A sword healed me
A dream baffled me
A heart became me… became I…
A Call reached me
Here, there and everywhere –
Now, tell me
If you understand humanity yet?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The Christmas holiday season
is like a dream
In January you wake up and
try to retain
as much of the dream as possible
within your heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
You’ll never be a better man
Than the boy you once were
So, when you lose your way
The answer you seek is not far:
Remember the dream you once had
Between child- and adulthood
When the boy you once were
Had just awakened from his dream
And the man you now are
Had not yet forgotten that dream.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I love you when you speak
The language of peoples gone;
Your mind, if you don’t mind, is antique;
Your honey tongue is on the run,
Breathlessly chasing a people’s dream
Gently up the stream.
You were my lover in hot dark nights
And you just couldn’t keep still;
Your tongue was restless as those kites
That circle and circle the forbidden hill,
And you taught me the language that lovers speak
When the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak.
Coo like a dove, my sweet love,
The sounds that you make are never enough.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There was a girl
Who read the story of the Wild-Horse Mountain
And who then went to find
The writer of the story
And question him thus:
GIRL:
Is this story true, of the lady who went to the Island of Wild-Horse Mountain and found the winged horses?
POET:
Yes, it is true.
GIRL:
Really?
POET:
Truly.
GIRL:
How do you know?
POET:
Because after the lady had visited the Land of Tomorrow awhile with Sram, he flew her in the night back home to our land again, and the next morning she told us the story…
GIRL:
What happened next?
POET:
Well, nobody believed her… except I. I did.
GIRL:
But why?
POET:
Why did I believe her?
GIRL:
No. Why did nobody else believe her?
POET:
Well… because they searched for proofs… and found none, at least none that made any sense to our minds. Upon hearing her story, we all sailed over to the Island of Wild-Horse Mountain, to see if we could corroborate her story. Also the other six people were still missing and we wanted to find them. But we found Nothing. No horses, no green valley, no horse-prints in the ground, anywhere, and no bodies… not the bodies of the six missing people, or bones, clothes, shoes, bags, articles, anything! All we saw, on the shore of the desolate, rocky island, was a beached boat. So, the people said she was mad. They came up with the theory that she had run mad and killed her friends at sea, or she had lost her friends at sea, which in turn had driven her crazy…
GIRL:
What?!
POET:
Yes, indeed. In the end, they put her in an asylum, where she finally died…
GIRL (sobbing):
What country is this wicked place?
POET:
Oh, it’s the country in which I live. My country.
GIRL:
What’s the name of your country then?
POET:
It is called “The Land of Modern Minds”.
GIRL:
The Land of Modern Minds? I have never heard of this country.
POET:
When you grow up, you will ear a lot of it. You will live there too.
GIRL:
Never! Never!
POET:
(smiles and says nothing)
GIRL (still weeping):
Oh, that poor lady! Killed for saying the truth; such an exhilarating, new, promising truth too. But… but… but is there a possibility that… that she maybe just had a dream?…
POET (smiling):
The same possibility that, right now, you are also dreaming.
GIRL:
But I am not dreaming!
POET:
You can only assume that until you Awake…
GIRL (after a pause… thoughtfully):
Thank you, Poet, for talking to me.
POET:
Don’t you want to know what happened to the lady after she died?
GIRL?
After? But no. It does not matter, does it?
POET:
But, yes, it does matter. When people die, they start to live…
GIRL:
Is this the truth?
POET:
Yes, dear Lady, it is.
GIRL:
So, are we dead now?
POET:
We are Partly Asleep.
GIRL:
I believe you, Sram. Please, forsake me not…
POET:
That I will Never do!!!
Then they embraced, and did weep
And woke up each
Gently from their deep sleep
On opposite sides of the world.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
My eyelids are falling
Like felled trees in the forest
My words are milky like drunken clouds
My breathing is slow and heavy like
A market woman’s feet in the evening
I am sleepy, drowsy, swimming and
I am about to fall awake –
Do you think I’m dreaming right now?
I can’t tell the difference
Do I write poems in my dreams
And forget when I awake?
The dream is the poem, a poem is a dream
I must leave you behind in the dream now, my love
Where my words will live on while
I wake asleep in the morning, in the morning.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 