I have seen
That Evil
Is deep
It has silenced me
For where it nests
Is the noiseless depth
Pay no attention to my words
They are a distraction
If you want to hear my message
Listen to my silence
My words will show you the way into my silence
Where I talk of treachery no words can describe.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Peoples of different origins
Colonised my heart
And raised therein an edifice
Of loneliness
And treasured dreams…
Look now at the liquid mountains
Luminous and eternal
Which have become my spirit’s
Backbone
Liquid mountains of moving light…
When I say I love you
I mean it…
When I say I love you
I mean it…
When I say I love you
I mean it…
Inside each liquid mountain
Within each luminous elevation
Is a heart
Of gold, of fire, of love…
So love me forever, my dear.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
In our hearts we feel it sometimes, we know it fullwell, even when we deny the feeling to everybody, including ourselves and our best friends, yet we know: the star is dying…
There you see it, in the spiritual firmaments of the decaying soul. It used to be a bright star, friendly and confident, and pure as miraculous crystal. Once, it shone and sparkled, twinkled and flared and brightly laughed like a flaming eye in the skyscapes of who you truly are… in the skylines of your sensitivity and consciousness.
What is that song which just faded out? It was not any ordinary song, nay. It was the star that lived, and died…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Just now I saw a morning star, luminous in the sky high up above me. And then suddenly I see it no more. Blue-grey clouds are journeying past in silent, ominous solemnity. Morning has dawned. The birds, they are a-singing. Early people are writing their feet into the road… and I am sitting outside, writing poetry and pretending it is prose.
Perhaps by the time I am through, and raise my head anew, the clouds would have gone completely by, and my star will be visible to me again. But if not, yet still I carry within me the picture of my morning star, as luminous in my heart as it was luminous in the sky.
I suppose this is what they call Nostalgia.
Now, see: the sun is rising, and the light is come again. Star, sun and light. And there is spirit inside of me – spirit and love.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I cherish the sight
I cherish the night
Moon-crowned… moon-found
The Poetry is so profound
That strikes the Deep
Out of its Sleep
When the fortnight is twice over turned
And the Full-Moon has returned.
I hear the lone wolf again
From the stillness of the deep and the pain
Howling from out of my Heart…
Howling from out of my Heart…
The moon…
The moon…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There is in me a very soft spot for naked tables and chairs, pens and empty sheets of paper, and a feeling that if I do not write the poem write now, it will never come again. It is a very special soft spot and very dear to me, sees me through lonely nights and empty restless days and times of unfocused focus and focused unfocus and is much better than many other a pleasure.
The heart is inside, the voice outside, and a strong voice without a heart is as baseless as the pointlessness of a voiceless heart, burning and knowing and mute. I have a very soft spot in me for that quick tender urge that would have me run again, a pen upon waiting sheets, a snow-lion stalking buried treasures, a singer learning and singing new songs, simultaneously.
Water is the king and when your heart runs like water, poetry becomes an uncheckable force – everywhere you hear it… everywhere you hear it. It follows you, it enters you, it captures you until you have mastered yourself in it, then it sets you free to roam again. Yes, this is my jungle.
I have in me a so soft spot for that glowing star, yonder flame that has decided to call me Home. Yes, Song, let it ring, and with my life I will follow, poet and musician and man. There was a beginning but, I vow, there shall be no end to eternal tenderness inside you and me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
If there be a she
Where is she?
If there was a she
Where was she?
If there be a he
Which is he?
If there was a he
When was he?
If there be a we
What are we?
If there was a we
Wherefore were we?
If there be an I
Why am I?
If there is goodness in the human race
If there is love in the human heart
If there is hope in the human being
Why are we still not there
Where we once were
When we had goodness and love and hope
In our hearts
On our tongues
And as the work of our hands…?
If I have a friend
Please help me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There you see her, over yonder, bathed in beauty and love… it is the beautiful mountain which I once peaked – wild and calm, primitive and yet new and fresh, a restorative to my battered soul.
But when it was time to move, I discovered that I could not take the beautiful mountain along with me, however hard I tried; so I left her behind and journeyed on. Yet, strange to say, with each step away from her that I take, she comes more alive, grows bigger and bigger within my heart – because when I left her behind me to find the Tomorrow Mountain;… when I forsook her for to seek the next peak;… I took her along. But if I had stayed with her, then in truth I would have departed from her. And, tomorrow, when I crown a new beautiful mountain, she will also be there, for all true mountains unite at every distant new peak again.
It is hard to explain in words the things which we harbour inside of us. I too try and try, but ever and again I fall short of fulfilment. Why? Where did I go wrong?
Tomorrow is the only friend I have.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Music made me
A bird saved me
A smile undid me
A woman slew me
A friend betrayed me
And I dug myself out of the Grave.
A wound bled me
A sword healed me
A dream baffled me
A heart became me… became I…
A Call reached me
Here, there and everywhere –
Now, tell me
If you understand humanity yet?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
How do you stop loving someone? How do you forget her eyes and her face and her secret smile and the unwordable look she bears upon her countenance?
How do you stop loving someone? How do you forget the times shared? How do you forget the Love, the eternalness of your togetherness? How do you make it right forever?
How do you stop loving someone? How do you uproot love from your soul? A love that wants to remain. Someone who loves you so. A union that begs for fulfilment. How do you not continue an ancient story in a modern world? How does an old tune not give birth to a new tale? How does a stream die?? It just resurfaces in other places…
How do birds of one wing not visit heaven together? How does loneliness not seek itself? How does fire not burn? How do sowed seeds not grow? How can you restrain the moving sun, unless you first stop the rotation of the earth…? But then how so many other people die, how many other things are lost?
How do waterfalls desist from falling? Two elephants in one heart, two hearts in one elephant. If you kill the elephant and open the heart in order to understand this phenomenon, what if they all die, elephants and hearts?
How do you stop loving someone? I don’t know.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 