AI Cannot satisfy The longing for reality The thirst for humanity It can only replicate duplicate Reiterate concentrate elucidate Our past in all its profusion The sum of all our confusion Neatly packaged in a way That appeals to our Today But it will not give us anything new. The future is still the spirit’s purview. If we want the new then we must Do what we have in the past Always done to grow: Let go of the past. Raising the intuition above the intellect We much reach deep within our depths And pull the new out from ourselves Because there is a magic that flows from Above Into our Intuition, our secret treasure trove. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
Intellect
THE INTUITION
Many thousand years have passed
And many thousand more will too
But when it’s over you will see
That the lies still have not changed the truth
Intellect will build a ship
That will fly to distant stars
But only intuition will know
What makes human beings happy
What makes human hearts happy..
Believe that you can make a change
Then spend your life trying
Speak your mind and be free
Before dying
Because the intellect will find a cure
For every sickness on this earth
But only the Intuition will know
What makes human beings happy
What makes human hearts truly happy..
It’s irrelevant if the seeds you sow
Do not yield fruit in your lifetime
It doesn’t mean a thing if no-one applauds
As long as deep within, you touch the happiness
Of having been true to yourself.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE GREATER DEATH
Literature murders poetry
Fine Arts murders art
Education murders the spirit
The intellect stands victorious over the intuition
The dead over the living
The darkness over the light
Human is dead for now
Tomorrow human will die the greater death.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE REAL STRUGGLE
Some doubt
That politics will not close
The cracks in society
That medicine will not heal
The bleeding soul
That intellect cannot remind
Intuition of Paradise
So they spend their lives
Listening to their head
And ignoring their heart –
They grow the mind
Then leave it behind
When they depart, listening for
An inner voice grown uneasily silent.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
JUST DANCE
A road of water, slippery
A bridge of knife-edge, treacherous
A fall of repetition, weakening
An opacity of reflection, saddening
A backdoor of wall, illusionary
A tiger of library, jealous
A conscience of intuition, merciless
Hardfall on softpain, intangibles
Awakening twice, once to life and once to self
Accepting the conditions of the journey
Intangibles, contradictions, repetitions, unpredictables
Armed with Intuition and intellect
Go with the flow.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
HARD TO GRASP
ONCE UPON a time, a man woke up and gazed upon a thought hanging in the air above his bed.
And the longer he looked at it, the more it confused him. And when he looked away, he forgot it.
Through the day it disturbed him, a memory he was trying to remember, but could not remember what he was trying to remember. But this he remembered: I am not who I think I am.
So this thought – I am not who I think I am – stayed with him for many hours, each as long as a decade, as he tried to fathom its meaning. Verily, it became his very name. His very aim.
Many hearts. In which one lies the answer? So he broke them open and left them behind, ravaged, the sought unfound.
He is written about in the books of men. His character has been copied and reproduced in stories down the ages – the raging, ravaging beast that consumes hearts and upturns nations. In truth he is a tireless seeker, and always giving. In shrouded truth. Love and peace cloaked in battle and tears. Shredding hearts to pieces with merciless thirst. How many times has he altered history, chasing the mirror? Thus has his troublesome picture been painted before him repeatedly. Thus too does he see himself, hours later.
But all I want is to find the key. Burning Flame, you are not who you THINK you are. This thought nags in him. Remember.
I am a warrior. No.
I am a lover. No.
You are a bridge. Just be.
Just be.
There! There it is again, the morning-thought, hanging once more in the sky above his mind. Hard to grasp:
Just be.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
MEMORYLESS
I forgot
I know not what
Because I forgot
And so I wander
And I wonder
Trying to remember.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
PERCEIVED BUT INARTICULABLE INJUSTICE
The legal compass of the law cannot always accurately navigate through the inchoate map of human nature; and is often blind within the fine web of subtleties entangling human volitions and actions, truths and falsehoods. A criminal, in the sightless eyes of the law, is only a criminal if he has committed a crime according to the definition of the law, when proven.
The true needle of morality is the intuitive perception, which however has no legal weight of authority within the letter of the law, nor a clear line of communication with the intellect. Guiltless or not, it is up to the accused – or his legal defence team – to provide (or destroy) requisite proof. That’s how difficult, and easy, it is.
Humanity is, by choice, the legal prisoner of an approximation – one with which it has voluntarily entered into a compromise, for fear of having nothing better, nothing more exact. Thus our law will never apprehend every guilty person, while some of those it apprehends and condemns will be innocent.
All we are left with, in the end, are our intuitions and our perceptions; our sense of justice; and our longing for a better and more perfect humanity – a longing which we will pass on from generation to generation, like a torch in the dark.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
MASKS
I saw suddenly one day that there on our face is a mask. Strange, but it moved. It spoke. It smiled. It frowned. It scolded. And it watched the world obliquely.
And the last thing it will tell you is that it is a mask.
And only love can break into this mask and comprehend its bearer. And only love can break into this mask and be comprehended by its wearer.
And then to my horror I saw that every continent has its masks. Every race, every group and every face. But whoever is unmasked by love is masked by love.
And love can speak, can comprehend every tongue. And on the day we have all learned to speak the language of true love – respectful, selfless love – we shall have no more the need to mask our hearts anymore.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
HAWKSHEAD
If Heart could speak on its own
Without Brain as translator
Spoke its Intuition alone
Unmindful of intellect, that imitator
What startling things, yet unknown
Would fill the world’s books?
What silent waters, from their deep zone
Would rise as bubbling brooks?
If there were Child in Adult
Awake, seeing, hearing, speaking
If adults would spare themselves the insult
Of hiding the child they in themselves are keeping
How different every day would feel
Refreshing, natural
With the adult balancing the child’s zeal
And the child making the adult more natural…
Youth, so important
Magic Time between two times
Child and adult merge concordant
Complementing each other like natural rhymes –
What you are in your youth is what you’ll be forever
Deep within your heart –
The heart speaks its mind but once, and never
Again from that path will depart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije (Poems inspired by the Lake District)
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 