HURT

Love hurts.
Life hurts.
People hurt.
People hurt people.
And hurt people hurt people.

And when it hurts too much
People begin to avoid the touch
The inner touch
Sometimes they permit the outer touch
But only perfunctorily as such
Because even it hurts too much.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

COMPLICATED

They will hurt you
It’s what they do
When they feel attracted to you.

Do they love you? It’s hard to say.
Do they hate you? It’s hard to say.
What they feel is hard to explain
But it will cause you pain.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

LOVE IS REAL

Love is real
And rare
And it’s a big deal
In here
Where we feel
And care
And hurt and heal
And share.

To steal the heart
Is to seal the heart
And throw the key away
Forever minus a day.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

LOVE HURTS

If love hasn’t driven you mad
Then you’ve never felt love before
If love hasn’t made you unbearably sad
Then love has not yet pierced your core
If love hasn’t tested the line you had
Between the good and the bad
and fundamentally changed you forevermore,
Then yours isn’t love, just a lore.

And the most astounding part
Is the dull ache somewhere in your heart
and the cold ashes that remain
when you walk down memory lane.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THE SADNESS OF KNOWING

“The Sadness of Knowing”
from my album “First Nature” (2016)

Listen to the full album:

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

PAIN YIELDS GAIN

Bearing pain
Is like rearing Gain -
You tend it patiently
‘Til it yields fruits abundantly
And then you plant again.

It’s a circle of pain
The farmer breaks the ground to plant the seed
The seed breaks its shell to yield the feed
Our teeth crush the feed to tend our need
Our need disciplines itself not to turn into greed
So that we still retain enough feed
To sow again.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

WHAT YOU FELT YOU WOULD FEEL

When the worst happens,
The thing you fear the most,
A strange thing happens:
Your fear becomes a ghost.
It was never real,
It was imagination,
It was expectation -
What you felt you would feel.

But aren’t we spirit? Pain is the hand
That forces us to grow and to understand
There’s nothing ‘twixt the sea and the sand
That can’t be healed by spirit’s magic wand.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

I’M FINE

How are you today?

I’m still hurting from yesterday
I don’t know what to say
I’m very sad even when I play
Lord, heal my broken heart, I pray
I’m lost, I can’t find the way… -

I’m fine, thank you
And you?

Thank you
I’m fine too.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

I HURT BADLY

There are pains I could bear
When I was younger
Which I cannot bear
Any longer

When I was younger, I was tougher
My heart could recover
Now I’m older, I’m harder
No longer a bender, now a breaker

No longer a healer, now a hurter
So I don’t engage
Unnecessarily, I don’t bother
I just turn a new page.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

EVOLVING

Always absorb the pain
And move on but resolve
To one day love again -
That’s how hearts evolve.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river