Is the price
Of life
Too high?
Experiences that break you
And rob you of the desire
To carry on living.
Is the price
Of knowledge
Too high?
Experiences that teach you things
Which in the end you wish
You never came to know.
If the price
Is this high
Then the prize
Had better be worth it
What ever it may be.
Some say it’s eternal life
Some say it’s finding yourself
But what do they know?
All these wiseacres
Just as lost as you are.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Do you know that never-ending road?
Do you know that ever-increasing load?
Do you know that pain when you receive pain?
Do you know that pain when you give pain?
Do you know that quarrel that can’t be settled?
Are you sore? Bitter? Embattled?
Do you want to hurt them back?
And hurt each time you hurt them back?
How elusive it is, no matter where you look
The last page stays missing in a riddled book
Vengeance will drive you to the ends of the earth
But won’t show you the way back to your hearth.
Revenge is its very own bittersweet revenge
The irony of the avenger – cruel, sad and strange:
To be trapped, a victim of your own vendetta
And wonder why it still doesn’t make you feel better.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Today I looked again
Through the rain and saw
The sun, but the sun wept
And it was the rain
Again
So I let the sun wet me
And every love that met me
Will never again forget me
The source of your flowing pain
Your sun, your happiness
And your rain.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
And then you will see
That blind people see
The things that are invisible
To you and to me
And then you will hear
What the deaf loudly hear
When silence is all
That you and I hear
And then you will understand
That children understand
To store deep in their memory
Things they don’t yet understand
When a moment full of pain
Opens up your heart again
And you learn to look again
And see again, and hear again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
What don’t I know
About you is what
I silently ask myself
Each time you ask me
What I’m thinking
As I think about you
How many wars
Have you fought, won and lost?
How many lives have
You taken, how many given?
How much hunger did you endure
To nourish so much anger?
How many loves have pierced you?
How many wounds are
Dripping a trail back to
How many acts of survival?
All I see is the smile in your eyes
And the hope in your heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
To laugh heart to heart always. To cry heart to heart always. No heart on today’s earth can laugh completely without first crying completely, because only that Pain can unbolt a bolted heart – the pain of friendship. Friendship does not come easy, even when you think it just popped up right from the very first moment – that was merely the seed. Now you have to plant it, water it, tend it, nurture it patiently – and, hopefully, finally reap the fruit and the flower, after the pain… the pain of friendship. I will always be your friend, I vow. When it grows dark, remember my words…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Basically to do with respect – or the lack of it. A disrespect that has its roots in an unexamined, unquestioned presumption which a person has grown up with from childhood.
The presumption becomes the basis for all further interactions with and reflections upon the people or places to which the presumption applies. This presumption forms the bedrock of the basic attitudes the person develops towards the object of consideration. It stands like a wall in the face of a reappraisal of the people, object, situation or place; it is wielded as a weapon, held up as a shield in one’s dealings with them.
A common tendency towards lethargy might then prevent one from examining the presumption, which may also be called a prejudice. To examine the prejudice means facing the danger of encountering and acknowledging its incorrectness or partial incorrectness, and taking the trouble to build up a new view of and relationship with the discriminated – and thus making an about-face.
So it becomes a matter of pride. And, passed on from generation to generation, it will stand through the centuries like the Rock of Gibraltar, and no-one will know its beginning anymore.
Pride is a drug. It offers you comfort and succour, with gentle paws and steely claws that entrap what they embrace.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
That blossom
That let go of the tree
And fell to earth
Is forgiveness
That recognition
That pain was the unavoidable teacher
Is forgiveness
That cleansing tear
Is forgiveness.
But I never want to see you again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
What’s behind the veil?
Nothing. The veil is your face
I don’t need a mask
My face masks my thoughts
The reason why I don’t hide things
Is because the best hiding places
Are out there in the open
That’s why you don’t see it
You don’t believe the things I tell you
Because I tell them to you
But if I were to hold them back
You would start to look for them in my Silence
And you would look and look
Until you became a prisoner of my Silence
So why don’t you appreciate it
When I just tell you in plain simple words
That I love you?
I killed you when I took off your mask
Now you want to kill me, by putting
A new different one back on.
But I already saw the girl within
Hidden deeper than shame and sin
Struggling with the pain within
And Pride is her middle name.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Where are we rushing to?
Death is waiting at the end anyway
Go there slowly
Enjoy the ride
Take long looks out of the window
Drink in the sunshine
Drown the moon in your soul and laugh
Out loud
Let the passing flower and
The passing cloud leave an impression
Upon your memory.
Pain is our ally when we look for love.
Remember, you will make mistakes
You will hurt the people you love
And they will hurt you back
And Regret will not heal the wounds
Or make anything better
Only worse
But your heart will find its place of peace
Someday
Somewhere
Somehow
Because I love you.
Even when I’m dying, still I love you to the end.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 