The Heart does not forget overnight Sometimes it needs more than one lifetime To forget the way back to the Light And the echo of the last Grail Bell’s chime Again and again it reads the Message Again and again it feels the pull of the Call But the gains and pains of the Modern Age Make it time and again slowly forget it All. A sad day it is time and time again When a soul rises again from its deathbed, And all it’s relatives’ tears and pain Will be nothing compared to its own regret. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
forgetting
FORGETTING AND FOCUSING
I dreamt that something did not arrive But think now as I may I cannot remember What it was in the night that didn’t arrive As though the memory I don’t remember Is itself what it was that did not arrive. Morning comes and I am alive Full of tomorrow’s energy and drive So I wonder what it was I forgot today I guess it must be yesterday. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
THE FORGOTTEN YOU
How could I forget you?
And forget that I forgot you?
Even this I forgot.
Forgot your face
Forget your eyes
Forgot your ways
Forgot our ties
Forgot the words we spoke in the night
Forgot the cadence of your voice’s delight
Forgot your touch, so deep, so light
I did not even remember you as a dream
You just were never there it would seem
Memory is a fast-flowing vanishing stream.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
DIMLY
I touch my intuition
Every morning
And at night I remember it
Like a friend from long ago
Far away
On the riverbanks of dawn
I forget what I saw in the soft bright sunlight
Of nightly dreams
Sometimes during the day
It will beat
Like a weak heart
I barely hear, barely feel
Quietly inside
Between conversations of How are you?
How are the revenue figures doing?
Very poorly. Stop. And look into the water
And feel your life
Trying to flow back to you, in little ripples
Of intuitively perceived memory
Of the blue island.
Don’t shake your head
And tell me you don’t understand
I know you simply don’t remember…
But I remember you; dimly
Like a friend from long long ago
Far far away
On a blue island….
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
AWAKENING AFTER A DREAM
Awakening out of a deeper reality
A dream of music, philosophy, poetry
Still ringing on in me, but fading fast
Each new second retaining less than the last
The dream fades away like an improbable past –
A populous sea into which a porous net is cast
The intellect tries to find again words, details
From each finishing dream but maddeningly fails –
Words which I just wrote down, somewhere, somehow
In a dream I was having sometime just right now
Melodies I was humming, natural realities I saw
I feel them still in me, but see them no more
For the heavy cloak and mind of a small and rigid earth
Have imprisoned again my consciousness, like once at birth –
For as swiftly and surely as we once forgot the baby tongue
As we grew from baby to child, yet remained young
So do words, connections given to us in our dreams
Oft disappear during Awakening, magically it seems
The harder the Intellect tries to affect their remembering
The faster it hastens their forgetting –
Even while we are still lying, freshly awake, in the morning bed
Watching one thing fading, another taking over, inside our head
As one sun rises, another sun is setting gently –
The glass is unclear, twilight illuminates faintly
Dawn and Dusk together were breaking…
Wish I could remember who I really am, upon awakening.
Not acceptable, this unending sleep
Of an eternal consciousness in the Deep.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 