friendship

YEAR OF LIGHT

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

It began as a running thought
What I ought and ought not perhaps
Know, do or think

It began as a bowl of poems
But when the curtain lifted
I saw it was one poem.

This is the path of light
The curving straight line
Nothing is too far, nothing is too near
I shall get there.

Lovely are the snowflakes outside the
Airbus windows
Soon we shall rollbacktaxirunaway and
Take off –

And I shall remember the snow
And take along with me the love of friends
Into the new year.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

ROW YOUR BOAT

~ Che ~ 9 Comments

image

Do you see
Those two boats
On the river?
Two brothers
Will row, side by side
Into the sunset.

One will dock
On the golden banks
While the other
Will row on
And they will wave
Goodbye to each other.

This is the way
Of the world
Of love and loss
Of meeting and parting
Of friendship and memory
Of life and death.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

Picture:
My brother Kwame and I
University of Ibadan, Nigeria
1995

A few weeks later, he passed on in a car accident.
This was our last picture together.

Kwame & Che
Kwame and Che

 

GOLD AND DAWN, SONGS, LONELINESS AND STRENGTHS

~ Che ~ 6 Comments

image
Gold glitters, but if all that glitters were gold, the world would be a place of great glitter and much emptiness.

Dawn ever arrives. No matter how dark the night, it will melt away when dawn awakens the travelling sun, and there will be laughter when you hear the voices of children playing in the morning…

Songs are a thing that are born mysteriously, and every moment everywhere hath its own songs too and there is no end to songs and games – and this has often mystified me.

And loneliness is a guest that comes and goes as he pleases, and once you get used to him, he becomes easy to live with and, together, both of you achieve many things which on your own you could not achieve, even if the whole world were to aid you.

There are some masterpieces which only lonely artists can create. There are some wars which only an army of lonely soldiers can win. There is a certain love which only two lonely hearts can share with one another. And loneliness seeks itself in you – but when loneliness goes away from you again, do not follow.

I am not strong. But when I unite with golden dawn and lonely songs, they make me the canvas on which they paint their dreams, and I am strong again. And free.

Gold and dawn, songs, loneliness and strengths.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

FRIENDSHIP

~ Che ~ 6 Comments

To laugh heart to heart always. To cry heart to heart always. No heart on today’s earth can laugh completely without first crying completely, because only that Pain can unbolt a bolted heart – the pain of friendship. Friendship does not come easy, even when you think it just popped up right from the very first moment – that was merely the seed. Now you have to plant it, water it, tend it, nurture it patiently – and, hopefully, finally reap the fruit and the flower, after the pain… the pain of friendship. I will always be your friend, I vow. When it grows dark, remember my words…

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

INNER SHARING

~ Che ~ 9 Comments

Every friend
Takes a piece of you
But not all
Will give it back

From friendship to friendship
You lose more of you
And have to reinvent yourself
In the end

This is when
Your friends will tell you
That you have changed
And they don’t know you anymore

Only those
Who gave back what they took
Will understand you now
Because they were the soil

That yielded you.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

TRUE COLOURS

~ Che ~ 5 Comments

Every tree eventually
Bears its fruit
Look not for reason
Wait just for its season

Long is the wait when
Deep is the root
You don’t know your friend
Until the end.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

WHEN WE’RE WEAK

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

When we’re down, that’s when
We should cheer each other up

Silence is gold when happiness is upon us
In sorrow, speech will hold us together

Hold me when you crave to be held
You didn’t know you were lonely until I hugged you

When we’re weak, we become stronger
This is the illogical magic in the heart of friendship.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

SOMETHING TO HOLD ON TO

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

If a true friend is gold, are they poor that have no friends? Or rich by default, for peace of mind is also the lot of the lonely who is spared the irony of the laughter and companionship of false friends? How often have we met with a friend and parted from a stranger a short while later? In these days of sad revolutions and mixed allegations, of spying and cyber double lives, of migration without integration, of religious justice without religious love, of racial reawakening and regrouping, gender re-evaluation, of social re-engineering and hardening, there are some you will meet who will tell you that what they need is not a friend, what they need is honesty and clarity.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

YOUR FORGIVENESS SMILE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

That moment
When the bitterness
Isn’t bitter enough to sour
Your forgiveness smile

And yet sad is the smile.

How friends fall away like unmasked leaves
Unable to bear the weight of trust
In all its lightness
Treachery by politeness.

– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.

ALL OF IT

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

Bear with grace
Life’s every face
Truth is a buffet
Conscience is selective
I guess everyone is right
According to taste

You’ll always be someone else
To someone else
But the sum of your contradictions
Contradicts each one of them –
But bear with grace
Every face, life’s every phase.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.