I dream every time I fall asleep And it’s always one adventure or the other; Conversations with beloveds I keep, My best friend, my father, my brother, And strangers too with whom I laugh and weep And fight and love and comfort one another; The dangers are real, the emotions are deep, Every fear, every tear, every worry and bother; At times I weightless fly, or I burdened creep, Through encounters that liberate or smother, But I’m always conscious even in the Deep, As awake as a baby born out of its mother. For I have vows to keep and sowed seeds to reap - And before it gets lighter it will get darker - And miles to go and never really sleep. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
NIGHT
MORNING YEARNINGS
Good morning, true Morning, Child of a Blue Night Spent on an Island of Dawning By a bright Dream light. Invisible sun, I feel you coming, Son of a celestial Height Full of a gazillion suns roaming Beyond earthly sight. I saw you in my dream last night My heart awakened and took flight Driven by longing for a land of light That called me, filled me, with delight Good morning, new Morning, Born of gentle Might, Let the world be gripped by Yearning… Let there be Light! Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
STRIVING
I strive
Therefore I am
I am not
Therefore I strive
Striving is the beginning
And striving is the end
And when the end is over
And I am over with striving
I shall ascend
A smile on my lips
Because the end is the beginning
And the beginning is the end
So long as I am the made
And not the Maker
Besides “Dawn can never be reached
Save by the path of night”*
And there again I shall strive again
For striving is living is joy.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
(*Kahlil Gibran)
NIGHT RAIN SUN SHINE
Give me nightrain
Or give me pain
Still will I smile and smile again
Bring me sunshine
Or bring me ease
Still will I cry and never cease.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
IN THE MORNING
The things we know in the morning
The moment we awaken
And from somewhere else are returning
But not yet quite retaken
By the world of thoughts that ever crowd around us
During the hours while we are fully day-conscious
Those things we know as sleep departs
Are as true as true can be
The Hour of Awakening to us imparts
The starkest clarity
It may be painful, may be pleasant
It may be quite surprising
But it is always true and doesn’t
Require verifying
Because if you did awake aright into this certainty
Events themselves will prove to you their authenticity
My thoughts are clear as sleep departs
And I see without guile
Displayed before me all those hearts
With whom I frown or smile.
————–
che chidi chukwumerije
————–
INSOMNIA
THERE IS a frenzy in the air. The world is dark and bloody like an ominous sunset. The land is full of cogitation. Everybody is fired up, wired up, wound up like an electric train, toy trains on their permanently defined tracks. There is a sad desperation in their every chug and hoot, in their every wailing whistle, a longing for a freedom that will never be, must never be, because this freedom, freedom from these tracks, this prison, would mean the end of destiny, the termination of purpose and of life.
This is the continuum in which I live. A dark and dirty cocoon. But who dares to break out? Who dares risking the encountering of the recognition that, truly, all one might be is a toy e-train on toy tracks mounted on a table in the children’s playroom? Who shall risk this dare, in the hope of finding another reality, the celebration of birth of butterfly?
A longing, hard to define, was long the taproot. The root of roots and hope of hopes. The dream unremembered in the clamour of urban dawn. Generation gap after generation gap. Yawning emptiness. Your blood is much too soggy. It weighs you down and is choking you to death, dear continuum. You are more than city, more than state, more than country, more than region, subregion, continent or subcontinent, even you are more than world. You are continuum. And I hate you. Hate you for holding me, for binding me, for being an extension of me and a limitation of me. I hate you because I hate loving you. I love you but I don’t like you. I hate loving what I don’t like. I hate hating you. I wish I could stop hating you and start loving loving you. I am afraid of you. You make me sick. You make my heart beat with a deep quietness that I know to be peace.
Why? Continuum of urban disconnect, why? When the sun rises you will wake me up from my insomnia and refuel me with your frenzy. I flee into the deep.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SHIVER
The quiet quiet of that night over there
Look, that night is waiting over there
What a night! Quiet and black
The blackness swallowing up the fullmoon
It is a blind night
With a will so dark it smothers
It’s starry children
And blinds its one bright eye.
I shiver
As you approach
I shiver
As you reach out to me
I shiver
As you approach
Baby, I shiver.
I hesitate to look out through the window
Into the distance
At that night waiting for me
Me and my heart, my sojourning heart
The eerie cat is silent with fear
The snake slithers hastily away
I fear that night, but I must approach it
With my heart of flames – I am the sun
The cold sun.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije..
REGRET IS SWEETEST AT NIGHT
See there, a stream
It flows only at night
How can this be?
Who melted my frozen pride?
Who taught me how to cry
When the night is singing?
The book of my life
The pages start revealing
Every petal of blossoming pain
The seed was mine, I broke the ground
And sealed it over with a pound of pride
Not a drop of remorse
Or so I thought.
Yet see, there, a stream
It flows at night in my loneliness
Pride thaws and falls like rains of regret.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
GOODBYE, LAUGHTER
Have you ever listened to
The night talking to itself
While you lay there beside one another
And not a word occurred to you?
You see the end approaching
Like a boat coming to the shore
To take you away
Away from a laughter called love
And as your worlds drift apart
In the space of one short night
Strange, but no words occur to you
To adequately say goodbye.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
URGE
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.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 