What are words worth On this lonely earth? Actions seem more honest But they also lie the best. You don’t know what to believe - Even silence too can deceive. Only what you intuitively perceive Will in the end be your reprieve. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
lies
THOSE WHO SEE THROUGH YOU
Good liars are used To being believed So they get confused, Irritated, aggrieved, When they meet someone By whom their well-conceived Lies, deception and con Are not well-received; Someone who sees through them deeply, Like a radar, stubbornly and unerringly, And refuses to be bought by them cheaply, But demands the real them unsparingly. The real them, the higher You, The deeper fruit of your true history - Be brave with me, trust me, be true. Let that be our bond, and our mystery. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
WHY?
I cannot handle lies like hot mounds of yam on a plate smoking squinted eyes thoughtfully tonguing open the gate of questioning Whys where Truth comes never or too late to hear my heart’s cries. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
EASTER
Tear the woods open wide It is a painting windowed in our dream Spear not the canvas to the side The blood waters a never-ending stream That will move mountains on Sunday And roll a rock downhill Into the valley of time we chime Monday Death is dead. Peace, be still The innocent should never be crucified While the guilty die on their pen Never was indignity this undignified Justice thus unjustified by unmanly men The innocent will rise again Broken the frame of your crown of lies Sunrays that fall like drops of rain A Spirit is born when a man dies. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
QUOTES ON LIES, ERRORS AND TRUTH
“Mother always told me: If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it doesn’t sound good to you, it won’t sound good to no-one else.”
– Leroy Robert ‘Satchel’ Paige
“When one has one’s hand full of truth, it is not always wise to open it.”
– French proverb
“Tell your friend a lie. If he keeps it secret, then tell him the truth.”
– African proverb
“Nothing hurts a new truth more than an old error.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing does Reason more right than the coolness of those that offer it. For truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.”
– William Penn
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
– Mark Twain
“Truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.”
– William Blake
“The worst you can do to truth is to cloth it in lies – you can never undo it anymore.”
– African proverb
“Follow not truth too near the heels, lest it dash out thy teeth.”
-George Herbert
“I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me.”
– Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour
“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth; but most times he will pick himself up and continue on.”
– Sir Winston Churchill
“My way of joking is to tell the truth.
That’s the funniest joke of all.”
– Muhammad Ali
“Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.”
– Pablo Picasso
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to suppress dissent; for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie. And thus, by extension: the Truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
– Joseph Goebbels (Propaganda Minister, Third Reich)
“Often times, to win us to our harm
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence.”
– William Shakespear (Macbeth)
“When you shoot an arrow of truth, dip its point in honey.”
– Arabian proverb
“Tell the truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.”
– Emily Dickinson
“There is no story that is not true. Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.”
– Chinua Achebe
“What is truth?”
– Pontius Pilate
“The greatest truth is the simplest one.”
– African proverb
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HAPPY PEOPLE
If you’re mad, and you know you’re mad, are you mad?
If you’re in heaven, and you’re not happy, are you in heaven?
If you have everything, and you’re empty, do you have anything?
If you have nothing, and you’re full, do you have nothing?
What’s the point in being able to explain the Laws of God to everybody, if you lack the courage to live the paths that will reveal yourself to you.
Some people have the courage to show you God, but they don’t have the courage to show you themselves. It is not God that is shrouded in strange mystery, it is the human being.
Don’t tell me about God – you can’t. Tell me about yourself. Show me who you really are. That’s difficult enough. But that’s the knowledge we reciprocally need, between and amongst ourselves, in order to be able to live happily with one another.
And happy coexistence, as ourselves, with ourselves: that is our Paradise.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
KNOWING
Ignorance is bliss
Yet I choose torture
Nature left a space
For growth via Nurture
Pain is the price I gladly pay
To be at home in my own Skin
The sadness is without
The Lion is within.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
NATURE OR PROPENSITY
For people who, by nature, are partner-faithful and relationship-loyal (I’m talking Sex here), there exists in their inside a great big Why when they observe how a person who they know really loves his/her partner with all his/her heart can have a sexual interchange with a third party – one time, or for a shorter or longer period, or intermittently – and yet remain totally committed to and in love with their chosen “permanent” partner. Is it a predisposition or a weakness?
It’s like a puzzle, a mystery that defies solution.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
TREACHERY
Was I not perhaps there with them, beneath the bombs and amidst the bullets and amongst the kids that died too easily, too early, and never rose again? Was I not perhaps there with them amidst the hoping and the despairing and the neighbours that turned too easily, too quickly, too happily, into foes – was I not really there? Aye, was I not perhaps there too, I wonder, was I not? I sometimes seem to see again the metalbirds dropping parcels of eager death and ripping the way open for birth, the painful birth of a new generation unafraid of guns, bombs and nuclear threats, and wary only of the little lies that neighbours and friends are ever wont to tell.
——————–
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
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SONS OF MOTHERS
Set the trap
In the taste
In the tastes.
They’ll eat out of your hand
And see you
And seek you
In everything, in every woman, in every land.
Make them enemies of their father
They’ll see him
They’ll fight him
They’ll hate him in every man
Even in themselves.
Crown their hearts
With their father’s good image
They’ll revere him, uphold him, replicate him
In themselves, their sons too, their world, the world.
Power is subtle
When subtly broken
Or subtly woken.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 