LICENCE TO LAUGH

Learn to bear your pain in aloneness,
But don’t bear your aloneness in pain.
Aloneness should bring relief from stress,
Should help you inner peace to attain.

Being alone with your sorrow is sad;
Share your aloneness instead with your gladness.
Seclusion allows the Healing Power of GOD
to save you from overstimulation and madness.

And you will be born anew in silence,
For aloneness is the mother of transformation.
And joy shall be your portion and your licence
To laugh again, in you a flame of Devotion.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

JEWELS AND THORNS

Somewhere it‘s day
Somewhere it’s night
Some hearts are sad
Some with joy bright

But even as the world
Continues to spin
The happy turn sour
The sad grow a grin

Sometimes you’re glad
Sometimes you’re down
Jewels and thorns
Adorn the human crown

What makes us human?
The ability to weep
And then laugh again
For our heart is deep.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

FREED

Hardly a night goes by
Hardly a breath flows, an evening
Melts
Without this thought
You brighten my life

Curly windows
When the crowds are many
I am alone

I wanted to be a nightingale
To be a flower
I wanted to be a star
The evening wind blows
I am human. Let it be…

Sometimes again
Freed from the city’s shackles
Hackles, hard tackles
I am green, bright yellow, blue as sky
Glad am I.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.