heart

TRUST IS THE MESSAGE OF TRUTH

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

One thing I know about life: you tell the truth to the person you truly love, to your soulmate. You feel enough trust and empathy, and you have the strong craving, to share the truth, the real naked truth, with them. People who are not able to tell you the truth are telling you that they don’t really have a deep place for you in their heart. This is a painful recognition to have, but a necessary one too. It helps you to protect yourself from deeper hurt and from new hurt in the future.

Trust is the message of Truth. As long as truthfulness is not coming from helplessness and desperation, then it is on the one hand a sign of respect, and on the other hand it is the ultimate admission of safety, intimacy and trust. You know the people you trust by the secrets you feel comfortable sharing with them. And you know the people who don’t trust you by the secrets they hold back from you. These are the people who are not close to you, no matter how close to you they seem to be. Veracity is the test – and the taste – of intimacy.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

EVENING BLUES

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Accept your loss
Only God is the boss
Many rivers to cross
To get to the real Us

What a quiet evening you are
Your inner voice carries far
Riding quietly in the back of the car
My listening heart is ajar.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WOMAN’S HEART

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Women are usually emotionally far ahead of men. For brief moments, the men might overtake, but in the overall story, usually a woman’s heart knows more than a man’s heart, knows it earlier than the man’s heart, remembers more than the man’s heart does, and retains the memory for much much longer than a man’s heart ever could.

Without woman’s heart we would lose our memory of home and our understanding of homeliness. When a woman goes, the home goes. And when a woman comes, Home comes back. The heart of woman alone can dig a tunnel to hell or span Heimdall’s bridge to Heaven. And she does it quietly, right there beside you, where the half of them poison you and kill your spirit’s joy, and the other half of them heal you and make you deeply happy. With just a few words, and sometimes even without saying a word.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

THE HEART WANTS TO UNEARTH IT

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
When you ask me Why I make all this rhyme
The answer is
What else should I be doing with my time
But exactly this
Nothing else is worth it
The pain covers the bliss
The heart yearns to unearth it
What you will one day miss
Your aching heart wants to birth it
Every day
Every blessed day
Every single day.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE HEART’S INDEPENDNECE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Your Heart is an independent being,
Don’t mess with it or it will show you pepper.
All the wahala you think you’ve been seeing
Will be yam when it shows you real shege.
It will riot and refuse to obey you;
It will sing praise songs to your enemies;
It will believe things that are not true
And long for its own self-decided remedies.
It will turn into a wild unpredictable stranger
With its own rules and on its own mission;
It will rush forward and fear no danger,
Driven by its own incomprehensible Vision.
And when it hurts it will burn like hellfire;
And when it laughs, you feel you’re in paradise;
And when it loves it loves with fierce desire;
But if it dies, your urge to live also dies.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WHERE THE HEART BELONGS

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

Someone who doesn’t take you with both hands, willingly and eagerly and totally, that person is not your home, nor you theirs. No matter how much it hurts, tear yourself away from them and move on.

Wounds heal with time.

We live in two worlds simultaneously. The one world is politics and society, is work and recreation, is projects and ambitions and all kinds of responsibilities, is ideologies, and is even family too sometimes. This is the one world, in which we chase achievements.

But there is another world in which we also live. It is deeper, is more subtle, more intense, quieter, and often very invisible. It is the loves that come and go; the tears and longings that burn our hearts; the seldom laughter of genuine joy; the raw friendships; the secret passionate love affairs; the intimately guarded happy home; the given trust and the broken trust; it is the real us deep inside.

We live in these two worlds simultaneously. And then time passes, and we die. And our obituary is full of what we did in the one world. While all our memories from the other world depart with us quietly in our hearts. And in the hearts of those who shared it with us.

Wounds will heal with time. But, while you’re on that journey, don’t go to where your heart does not belong. Seek your happiness in being true to yourself, always.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

ONCE YOU TASTE TRUE LOVE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
Once you taste true love
Lust becomes a mechanical chore
Pleasure is no longer enough
You want something more.

You learn to recognise the grain
And separate it from the chaff -
You want to feel that joy again
You want your heart to laugh.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

I DREAM EVERY TIME I FALL ASLEEP

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
I dream every time I fall asleep
And it’s always one adventure or the other;
Conversations with beloveds I keep,
My best friend, my father, my brother,
And strangers too with whom I laugh and weep
And fight and love and comfort one another;
The dangers are real, the emotions are deep,
Every fear, every tear, every worry and bother;
At times I weightless fly, or I burdened creep,
Through encounters that liberate or smother,
But I’m always conscious even in the Deep,
As awake as a baby born out of its mother.
For I have vows to keep and sowed seeds to reap -
And before it gets lighter it will get darker -
And miles to go and never really sleep.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE POWER IN THE COURAGE TO BE TRUTHFUL

~ Che ~ 1 Comment 
Truth is so powerful. There is almost nothing
That you cannot forgive a truthful person.
It’s a strange phenomenon. What is hurting
You is healing you, is teaching you a lesson.
Even while suffering, you can’t stop trusting.

Something about them awakens respect in us.
Truthful people fascinate the coward in us,
Inspire the warrior in us, touch the human in us.
In the depth of their sin, yet they carry the cross.
Even at their worst, they’re still the best of us.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

BELIEVE YOUR HEART

~ Che ~ 1 Comment 
Believe your heart,
It does not lie;
Let it be your chart
and your Why -

Why you believe or disbelieve a story;
Why in all things you give God the glory;
Why you wake up and get up
And dress up and show up
Morning after morning after morning
Like the sun always returning every morning.
Why you remember the sun and look up
And drink renewal from the Grail Cup.

Follow your heart,
no matter where it may roam -
It is like a magic chart
that knows the way home.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river