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
longing
BRUISED SOUL
A wild world
Full of gentleness and calm
Hot afternoon sun
Cool evening breeze, oh balm
Oh blow softly o’er my bruised
Soul, my used, confused palm
Craving a crisp clasp, my blues’d
Memory of belonging to you
Briefly ellipsed –
Briskly eclipsed by re-longing for you.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
LONGING WITHOUT BELONGING
Half me half you I became because of you Neither me nor you I remain and so do you If I became fully me And you became fully you Would there be any similarity Between me and you? For the urge that binds us Is the urge than divides us We are similar in longing But dissimilar in belonging. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
DUSKY
The wooded streets heavy laden with evening tears The dusk is wet with wanting well within her weathered years where everything longing meets maturity already wears with a battered beauty so haunting for the bruises it softly bears. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
DISTANCE
I have a longing for intimacy
Not satisfied by sex
A craving for voyeurism
Not quenched by porn
A yearning for universal entanglement
Not gratified by orgies
And a need for intense borderlessness
Not staked by perversity
What is it?
I have an itch for mystification
Not calmed by lying
A desire for friction
Not stilled by confrontation
A propensity for destruction
Not quelled by murder
And a burning for escape
Not silenced by suicide
What is it?
It’s like I am separated from myself
And watch myself through a window
And everything that I do
Is actually being done by my shadow
While I wait for something real
Really really real.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
PAIN LIKE A STREAM
Like a stream runs this ancient heart of mine. I write truest and best when I am in pain and all alone; this is when I write down tomorrow’s pieces. Not when I am happy and relaxed; lazy, immature me.
When I have comfort, I forget, I become complacent. When there is peace, I laugh, which is good, but I also fall asleep, which is dangerous and wrong.
Maybe two thousand years from now I will be mature enough to be happy and be inwardly mobile simultaneously –
Pending this day, however, pain will be the helper of the Poet and of the wanderer. Pain and love and longing. To Keep me awake, to drive me onwards…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
VOICES NEAR
Has Music jarred you through and through before? I don’t mean the base, coarse Music of now. I’m talking about the High Trumpets of the Immortal Realms. Have you heard them before?
Have you heard your heart beat before? I mean not the muscle. I’m talking about the leap of the flame in you when Heaven gave you a Name. What’s your Name?
Show me your friends, man, and I’ll tell you who you are – your real friends. Show me your Palms and I’ll teach you your destiny.
Have you ever before been blinded by dazzling Sunlight? Not the sun in the sky, but the Sun Above All Skies. – Show me your face, sister, and I’ll read a Million things thereupon.
Yesterday gave birth to today. Today yields tomorrow, the known unknown.
When I am alone, alone, sometimes, I remember my brother faraway… Not he who died recently, but he who has never once died. The Immortal Spirit whom I knew – before we were born as brothers on earth – in a blue Kingdom far so far away. A Kingdom whose Name, if I ever knew it, I have long forgotten.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
DADDY DEAR
Ashes to ashes…
Dust to dust…
Spirit to spirit…
Have mercy, o Holy Ghost!
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Another anniversary of the day I beheld for the last time the noble countenance of my father. Then we closed the coffin and confered his cloak into the warm arms of Mother Earth. And set the spirt free for the Flight back Home. Always in my fondest Memories, Daddy dear… 22.5….
(Pic: my first day in Boarding School, Sep 1995 – King’s College. Lagos)
LOST PLANES
Like the lost letter
I sent to you – the postman never said
It never arrived
And I’m still waiting
For your unsuspecting reply
And yet it is you who are waiting
For me on the other side.
How can coplanar souls lose sight of each other?
Their calls echo leeward and die unheard.
How can planes fly into the wind and disappear
And leave gaping wounds behind
Lost at sea?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SOFTLY, KILL
Not like that.
Crown the valley.
The hilltop is smoking.
Smoking gun.
Chewing gum.
Nonchalantly tracing and caressing your
Archipelago of feelings
Like a toy ship
Boning the corset
Gargle your gift of gab
Smiling to the ravine
Love is an aspic
Softly, steer
Softly, stir
Softly, pick
Softly, kill.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 