I don’t know where I’m going with this
I am a footprint in the dark night
That keeps repeating itself
Endlessly, yet it’s going somewhere
It is a mystery to me why I ask
You to trust me, although I know
Neither the way nor the goal –
I know only the stubborn Urge in me.
And I know you are a part of this Urge
When it hurts you, it hurts me
I don’t know where I’m going with it
All I know is you’re coming with me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
When, blinding,
The sun’s rays, binding,
The sun’s gaze, finding its way
Through a window, minding
Your business for you, a dazzling hello
Like a friend’s caring
Like a friend’s sharing a heart
You shut tight your eyes tight
A moment –
When love won’t wane, won’t dim, won’t fall
When all you get is love, love, love
You bite back the tears of incomprehension
And open wide your soul –
What your eyes can’t bear, the heart can hold
The heart will grow, the heart will grow!
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I hold you tenderly
Like a precious thought
I sparingly share
Only with strangers
For they know not its worth
Will not rob me of it or its meaning or
Crush it to death like a writer
Crushes an idea in his mind –
Might be a butterfly
Might be a petal
Might be a story that would have changed minds –
Gone, unwritten, unspoken, unshared.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I see the sun rising
The horizon is no longer far
We have met each other halfway
The horizon is now the road.
The smell of your breast
Is a miracle
The touch of your breath
Is a poem
That ceases never to enchant
The undulating sands beneath which
My desert is overpowered
By your thousand flowers…
I am born anew
When you gently wake me up
In the night
Just to look into my eyes…
Heaven.
Heaven be your name
And though memoryless we wander
Far away in this blue grass under
The heavens,
Yet you pull me up where I see you
Calling me, reminding me, admonishing me
With your eyes in the middle
Of the night.
Heaven be our home
A thousand eternities from now
Far Beyond yonder horizon
We see.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A dog is barking higher up
On the mountain
A worried sounding woof
Every few seconds
I wonder if someone is missing again
Down in the valley there is a train
That rushes past. It sounds like
A river every few minutes
Carrying someone’s dreams into
Another person’s thoughts
I’m trying not to pay attention to the
Conversation taking place beside me
The emotions are strong
Father and daughter gently tying
Up the memories of years past
Just like I waited six days
To finish this poem
So they also waited all these years
To finally say, at the departure, I love you
Please forgive me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Only the one you love
Can make you feel small
And vulnerable
Go easy on love
Like a fresh leaf awakening
Let your every touch be thoughtful
I die when you kill me
I sigh when you kill me
I cry when you kill me
I have no shield against your thrust
Look into my eyes before you strike me dead.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
With every flight my thoughts take
In the sight of my heart
You become to me ever more natural…
A natural extension
No pretension.
I met you in your every age
At every which one of your many life-stages
I know your low, your high
Your I, for I have looked you in the Eye.
We shall grow. This is not the end
A new task. Opened, a new flask
Undone. Another mask, unmasked.
Another you. Another me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A smile is a gift-wrapped heart
A heart is an unspoken smile
You grow on me
Windows open up too
A transparent pane of glass
I see you through
Houses head upward
But we speak one tongue
This time. We change hearts
Like we change lanes –
We grow on us.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Some wounds cannot heal
Don’t open them for they are
Like the clock that ticks only forward
How ever often the cycle closes
Yet the wound still bleeds
Because I saw into your mind
All the I’m sorrys in this world
Only make it worse
We met, it seems, just to miss.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The worst pain I ever felt
Was once when I embraced someone
And my embrace, she said,
Made her think of someone else.
Some things you should keep to yourself,
Yet it’s better when they’re spoken out
And it’s best of all when they hurt like hell.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 