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
new
THE OLD IN THE NEW
Every new thing you meet Is an old thing to someone else What to you is a new beat Others have rocked from ever since Your new love is someone’s old flame Burning low but burning still Because people stay the same Captive to their former thrill Battles you assumed were done Suddenly resurface demanding review Friends you thought were long gone Suddenly come again to protect you Nothing you meet is new It is old to someone and to itself It might even be old to you But you simply don’t realise it yet. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
A CERTAIN NEWNESS
New thoughts arising in colours becoming
New paths all over, all over my path
New answers falling in patterns benumbing
New friends with old faces
New ties with old places
New visions bring a new sense of belonging
Newness and calmness out from a new bath
Of old traits are few traces
Of new veins are full vases.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
REMINISCING THE CHANGE
What holds people together and transforms animosity into love, distrust into cooperation, disunity into lively oneness? What melts the old barriers and creates new ones? What overcomes us and flows over us? What ever came over us? What is our goal? What can make us agree where once we disagreed?
A force, like a violent wind, whips us away from the old way and whisks us into the new. All we have to do is try. Things end, things begin anew, old things go, new things come, we shall live if we are ready to change.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
BEING TRUE TO WHOM YOU’VE BECOME
When your people come calling
Big Brother and all
Will you be able to resist the pressure?
Will you still be you
The You you now are?
When your people come calling
Will they assign again to you your old role
Or will you assign to everybody a new role?
Will you still be you
The You you now are?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
AUTUMN WAKE
Yield
Like the fields
Do yield
A piece of you
For the season of ripening
Is upon your feet.
All your old sins, and new too
All your old fears are new too
Even your old hopes will become new
Strengths, thoughts and dreams
Have rested long enough, it seems
Have rested long enough, it seems
Yield
Like the fields
Do yield
A multitude of fruits and roots
And all were offshoots
Of just one seed
So, yield to your need
And be the seed
And the fruit
And be the answer today
To the question you asked yesterday
Become one with your longing.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
FAINTHEARTEDNESS
There is a time, a moment
To say yes –
You feel it, you know it, you just
Have to say it
Yet you drown it in conversation
Puncture it with rhetoric
Hang a cloud of Why over it
Betray it with a question mark, and then fall silent
There is a time, a moment to
Say yes – only the brave
Will grasp it. The fainthearted
Will run away into a familiar point of view
Every meeting is a thing of beauty
Everything that confuses you and
Throws you off-balance is a gift from life
Knocking on the door of a greater you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
IT WAS IMPORTANT
When the cloud waved goodbye
To the sky, turned to rain
And fled to earth, it said to sky
I’m not going back
I’m moving on
When I left you, changed
And came back into myself
It was important for me to let you know
I was not going back
I was moving forward.
The old is not old
When seen with new eyes.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
NEW ROADS
How maddening it must be
Upon reincarnation to see
The fullness of your memory
In all its grime and glory –
Take it away, take it away
I don’t want to know today
The sadness and joy of yesterday
With my heart let me find my way
I fell in love, in love anew
With dawn and dusk, with dream and dew
With life and love, through vice and virtue
Another me, another you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
JUST DO SOMETHING NEW
Kingdom of oil and salt
Swishing tales swipe the sand
Behind vanishing storytellers, nay, dreampreachers
With high-sounding verses
They promised us a great future
Where are they now?
Where are they now, to see us
Reaping locusts and riffling through
Sheaves of worrisome mirrors
For, how closely the future mirrors the past!
Eyeballs hypnosis of rearview mirrors
Nobody driving the car forward.
Too much salt!
Do you hear my tongue burning
A song of sadness into your ears?
Too much heat! To look back
While walking forward is folly
New generation, is folly.
New generation. This name mocks you
Like it mocked before your time
Every generation that came and left.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 