There is a well
A deep oily well
Bottomless
It has swallowed time
My life time
I live in the future
I live in the past
I can’t find the present
It has squeezed hours
Split seconds
I cannot find time
Time to explore time.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
On the way to Falkenstein
I knew you were mine
On the way from Falkenstein
I knew you were mine
But when we stood side by side
Upon that castled immortality
I knew only that the great divide
Yawns yet ‘twixt longing and reality
And if we true will call this meeting our last
Then, woman, never lie away our past.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Look at the palm of my hand,
My lineage has run riot –
Griot! Take note!
For the palm is the root of our land.
Tapper, come down
from them high
intoxicating dread locks,
The Elders on the ground
Can see beyond the highest tree.
Tapper, come down
And tap your roots instead
Look at the palm of your land.
Before you boast, ask yourself if you really know
The back of your hand.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
(PALM LINES)
How many will survive when the drones
Say Hello
When a young lady, barely out of
School, is fingering somewhere a hidden button
And a closed-minded kid, for whom
The world is a distant myth
Sits for ours masturbating a joystick?
Their message is a drone
Their package death faster than the
Speed of sound –
How many will survive when the mad
Men on the other side also get their hands
On the deadly secrets of death?
How many will survive to teach tomorrow?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
If we could see the future, what would be its past?
If we could see the future, would we change the present?
And would we then see the new future that arises out of that?
If we could see the future, would it still be the future,
or would we have turned it into the past?
And what would the future then be?
I guess we can never really see the future…
The present is the future.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The world is changing under your watch
There is hatred abroad, fear is at home
Never was it easier to manipulate the future
Crowds of boomerangs are rushing out of the past
Back to the present
When events take this turn, sharply
When all the resentments flower
When cultivated prejudices become seasoned culture
All that’s needed is a reason, a trigger, a spark
There is no hiding place
Everyone has got a grudge to prove
The dark hearts will plunge the world into chaos
And watch the good people tear themselves to pieces
– Who will rise above their shadow
And solve a paradox?
Everybody has been aching for the final conflict
Woe betide us
When it finally comes upon us.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Do not go too fast, do not go too slow, nor stop, nor stop to look back, nor look back, nor go back – walk on at a steady pace. Paradise is hidden between yesterday and tomorrow.
Do not love too far, do not love too near, love as you walk, walk as you love, forward calmly, forward calmly, nor be afraid of heartbreak. Paradise is hidden between yesterday and tomorrow.
Do not dream too much, do not dream too little, do not trust too quickly, do not trust too late, do not work too hard, do not work too soft, do not cry during the day, do not laugh in anybody’s face, do not expect that those whom you love also love you, do not expect that those whom you understand also understand you, do not assume that those whom you see not also do not see you, do not assume that those whom you love not also do not love you.
It is in your heart today, it is in your hands today. Forget the past, son, forgive everyone who ever hurt you, nor dream alone of goodness only in the future – Paradise is hidden between yesterday and tomorrow.
The person who loves you the most is the last person you would think of. Love me, dear, please love me dear. Paradise is hidden between yesterday and tomorrow. And if we let it slip away today, we will not and never find it again tomorrow, but will walk on lonely again, like yesterday.
If you love me like I know you do, please hold my hand forever.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Everything about the earth’s geological history and trend suggests the disconcerting and alienating thought that human beings were not intended to exist on it for a long time – speaking in terms of geological time. It seems we are a species, the conditions favourable for whose biological existence would, like a thin strip on the broad spectrum of earth time, be laboriously reached after billions of years of evolution, tenderly maintained for several millions of years (very short compared to the past and future age of the earth), and then gradually evolved away from again. The earth will then plunge further in its cycle into more advanced states of instability or stability, which ever way you want to view it, eventually drastically altering the delicate balance of elementary interplay that once sustained higher animal and, above all, human life upon its surface. Mother Earth, it seems, like all mothers, after bearing and rearing her children, will one day tire of them and expel them from her home.
Whereas the earth is over 4,600 million years old, the first hominids appeared just 4 to 6 million years ago, while human beings as we know them today came on the scene only about 200,000 years ago. It took 1,600 million years for the first cyanobacteria (capable of photosynthesis, thus producing oxygen) to evolve, and after that it took another almost 3,000 million years before humans arrived, and many dramatic things happened along the way. This reminds me of an analogy I once read somewhere: that if the age of the earth up until now were a ninety kilometre long motorway, humans only appear somewhere in the last few meters at the end of the final, the ninetieth, kilometre. Quite awe-inspiring to me. It however does not end there. It keeps moving forward. Discontinuing the influence of human technology, which largely – at least in the short term – seems to be putting more pressure on the earth, the natural geological changes in the earth and solar system will, within many thousands of millions of years in the future, yield an environment poor in exactly those elements and conditions that once called forth biological life. Quite simply, even if in the future the earth is spared every possible kind of accident and trauma that ever befell it in the past, which is highly unlikely, yet the earth will still eventually age. The sun too will dramatically change and become very unfriendly. It seems quite unlikely that the human race will not become extinct some day, at least on earth.
Some say this is where science fiction comes into this motion picture. According to them, science fiction of today is science fact of tomorrow. Man, the technological being, will become master over the laws of nature. Time travel will become possible. The quick traversing of large distances that normally would cover light-years will be achieved. New sources of energy, new methods of making use of energy, would have been developed. New planets colonised. A new super race of galactic humans would have been bioengineered. And all the rest of that flight of fancy. Well, it’s hard to dispute something that has not yet happened. But so far all we seem to do is put ourselves in danger and expose just how vulnerable the human species is. So, as an aside, let’s just hope the bees don’t go extinct. And yet this dogged belief in technology’s ability to secure us a future is understandable, because… what’s the alternative? – eventual Extinction someday?… Really? Extinction?… It’s a thought that’s just inacceptable to the human mind, that the human mind will one day be no more, disappeared with the human being. Because it just does not make any sense: What on earth was the rationale behind the brief physical existence of this species – Human? What was the point? To grow and to know, only in order to forget and to die? The entire species – without being able to pass all that knowledge on to… someone… anyone. Why?
Well, what about passing it on to, retaining and using it, ourselves – somewhere, somehow? What if Mother Earth is not really our mother? Only our surrogate mother? Our temporary womb.
This is the point, I must admit, at which some times my thoughts turn to that little elusive thing called Spirit. That thing of which they say that it originates in a place, in a state, in a consistency, that floats above every measurable concept of time and space, that existed before and will continue to exist after every earth has had its day. They say it, Spirit, coming from there, is eternal and that it alone is in truth the true human being. I have read that it incarnates and reincarnates time and again, seeking maturity. I have read, have heard, have even sensed, that it speaks the language of intuition and will always be incomprehensible to the intellect, and yet will always continue to silently argue with it. Because, if the earth is my mother, who is my father? I know I can’t prove anything to anybody, not even to myself, yet for sure the earth will meet its end one day, and yet there is in me something that will live on, somewhere, somehow, consciously. Eternally and forever. And I call it Conscious Knowing Joy.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
In the Distance, mysterious and magnificent
There spreads a group of towering mountains
Who, in total appearance
From left to right, in shape and aura
Looks like a wild horse,
Frozen in mid-gallop.
And there is a legend, aye there is
About the heroic wild-horses
Who, long, so long ago
Had guarded these mountains
So that nobody had been able to come near them
Or of mounting these towering rocks
Nay, Mountains.
Beautiful wild horses. Killer-beasts of different colours
Guardians of this mysterious mountain-range
From an era immemorial. – – –
Finally, an earthquake split off the Wild-Horse mountains
From the rest of our land
Such that it now floats, an Island
Barely visible miles out into the mysterious ocean
And called by everybody “The Island of Wild-Horse Mountain”.
Are the wild horses still there? Guardians!…?
What have they guarded for so long?
Seven people on one boat,
Trapped by a violent gale at sea one summer evening,
Decided to quickly beach on Wild-Horse Mountain Island
Before the sea wrecked their boat
And killed them.
Now you must understand that the legend
Of Wild-Horse Mountain
Is just a legend.
It is possible that this small island with its rugged mountains
Has ever floated right there in the ocean
And that it was all never a part of our mainland
And that no wild horses had ever existed.
But the legend claims that the Wild-Horse Mountain
Had once been on land, our land, guarded by wild killer horses
Until an earthquake turned it into a floating island
So many aeons ago.
Nobody really believed, but you know how it is:
Everybody likes to repeat legends.
It was the Silence
That first struck these seven people
When they landed ashore.
Immediately, they were gripped by a tension
And an uncanny excitement
Which they could not comprehend.
The gale at sea suddenly died
Yet they remained on the shore of the island
Gazing up in awe at the Wild-Horse mountains.
These people were three couples and one lady,
Seasoned Adventurers
And, all of a sudden
They decided to explore the mountains themselves
To see if they would find any relics
Perhaps bones or any other things
Which might perhaps substantiate or contradict
The old Legend.
So they began.
They moved in a group towards the mountains.
But night fell
And they camped and slept.
In the morning they began to search –
There are seven mountains that make up this breath-taking range,
And in six days they had explored six mountains
And found nothing. –
On the seventh day, they mounted the seventh
And, over half-way up,
Heard a strange sound below them… and,
Looking down,
Saw the entire valley suddenly
Populated by horses nobler than the noblest steeds,
Silent as tombs, with angry fire roaring out of their eyes,
Watching them…!
The ancient wild horses; the beautiful legendary killer-beasts.
Alive.
It was eerie. They seemed to have come out of nowhere.
In a flash, the wild horses
Charged up the mountain, towards the intruders.
Looking up, the humans saw a light glow on the mountain-peak
And it occurred to them suddenly
That it was a race to the top.
They just knew it!
If they got to the peak before the wild horses
Then they would be left to live…
But if the wild horses caught up with them
Before they got to the summit
Then they were each dead and gone for life.
So the race began.
Up they sped, faster and faster
Empowered by the threat of death
And the possibility of victory and life.
But the wild horses, too, continued to gallop their tested
Way so quickly and surely up this seventh mountain,
Pursuing them deathly,
And still they were all silent.
But if the horses were wild
And if the mountains looked like a wild horse
Then surely these virgin mountains were also wild.
Only now did the intruders
Suddenly understand the true meaning
Of the name Wild-Horse Mountain.
Suddenly, like a very wild, untamed horse
This seventh mountain bluntly refused to be mounted.
Ever and again it bucked
And threatened to throw
The human beings down, into oblivion.
And then…, the near inevitable happened…
One of the humans missed his footing… and fell!
He rolled into the path of the merciless wild horses
They tore him brutally apart…
His partner, seeing this, lost her balance
And pummelled down to her death too…
One by one, singly and yet in pairs
They all began to slip, stumble, fall
Thrown by the bucking of wild-horse mountain.
In the end,
Only the lady made it to the top
While the three couples fell back and died
Pursued by wild horses,
Betrayed by a wild mountain,
As all mountains, how ever tame, are actually very wild.
At the peak
She found that the light glow was in truth a path.
On it was a proud Stallion, calm,
Who had eyes that were almost human.
She mounted him
And he bore her grandly down the winding
Gently-sloping path that led into the very heart
Of the entire Wild-Horse Mountain Range…
Unexpectedly they came across the
Green Valley.
Her breath caught in her heart
As she beheld the precious treasures
The unbelievable Prize
Which the wild horses had so faithfully
Guarded from that time unremembered:
She saw a colony
Of magnificent winged horses,
Each exactly as she had always
Imagined Pegasus would be,
Only even more beautiful were these…
For the first time ever, one of us
Encountered the valley of life
Where the winged horses had been
Slowly evolving over millennia.
There, deep inside the gentle heart
Of the Wild-Horse Mountains
Guarded faithfully by unchanging unwavering
Wild killer-horses
Without fear, without question
Aided by a stubborn mountain.
Their leader’s name was Sram.
He spoke to the lady from the land of men.
She mounted him, he beat his wings, and, together
They visited awhile the Land of Tomorrow
Where, one day, the Earth will also be…
And noble animals will roam the earth again
And noble human beings will bestride the earth anew
And the winged flying horses
That the lady saw in the valley of life
Will make a friendly abode with humans on earth
For a long time
Yet to come.
When next you see a wild horse
Do not try to tame it
But remember:
That wild streak in her
Is the sole guardian
Of a beauty
That yet sleeps, silent,
Within the heart of every human being.
– AKA TERAKA (Che Chidi Chukwumerije)
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 