I want the lines of your palms
Written in my diary
My future lives
As though they were already past
My days numbered
My deeds counted
And when I scoop your two palms to my face
Inhale your peroxide breath
Exhale my soul, blue kiss
Your eyes, too round full moons
Have dawned on me with undisguised thoughts
Warning me:
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Caked by the moon’s blood
It was our virginal touch
I thought of you
As a wolf howling for mystery
As we silently
Touched without a sigh
All I remember is the look
In your observant eyes
Muddied
By the moon’s blood
No rain could
Wash it away.
Dance, ye shivering droplets
Our skin is voyeur
Our dance is romance
Immortalise our first kiss.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The mirror sang from side to side
Somewhere over the rainbow an old guitar
Picked up a young musician,
Awakened in his heart the desire
To be a Bridge.
And he is still wandering
looking for himself –
When the masquerade dances
not earthly drums move its feet
but the worlds underneath.
When your heart moves
Close your ears to the kora you hear
Look for the mirror within
For the mirror swings
from side to side.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Alas! Treble now sounds
Like bass! Gold shines
Like brass! Who dulled
The taste of water?
Who turned sons into
Wailing daughters? Alas!
The wrappa moans
Look at me I am now
A pair of trousers, split in two!
Hush! Zip up your swollen lips
Cries the warrior’s breastplate!
Look at ME! I am now a Bra.
There is an owl howling
Melancholy in the night
A road has split in two
Causing confusion
Because the ground has
Disappeared.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
She named me River
Because I whet her lowlands
In the hour of her drought
– I saw a palm tree
Hotly pursued by a multitude
Waving palms
But I did not understand
The power from which they sprung
Forth – must I understand?
Which sane river stops to understand itself?
Waters may rise to clouds to fall back as rain
But what woman rises from her heart to her head
To peer back down into her heart from her head
To understand herself
Without losing the misty way back to the dawn?
For she is mysterious yes it is complicated
As simple as a riddle
The flowing is the being, picture-perfect
It is frozen
Faster! Faster! Faster!
Breathlessly I never tire
The day she catches me
Is the day
She will lose her desire for me. For
She calls me River.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Alive in your grave
I hear your thoughts
Squirm
Unruffled by your
Poker mug
Two black stones
Sprout
On your grave head
Pierce my soul’s louvres
Shivers me alive.
Cold come forth
I need your warmth
– gently!
Exhume me…
With care.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Those days were magic
I was a boy but already a man
You were a woman but still a girl
We understood each other.
No matter how much they dig into our past
They’ll never really understand it today
You cannot understand a fairytale
With your intellect.
You have to be a child at heart
To understand magical love…
There is a grove
therein a cove
therein a light
therein a dove
therein a mystery.
Memory becomes an elixir.
Our hearts were broken
By the logic of separation
Perfection had to be
Enshrined
For future reference.
The sanctuary of blueprint
Guard it, a secret. A desecrated deity
Cannot be appeased by sacrifice.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Your disgrace
Reflected on my bottom
Wiped with tears across your lost face
Mirrored in anguish ambushed –
Be of good cheer –
The dew
Washes the exposed leaf clean each time
The cock crows again.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
He who will change something
Must break something
Sang none other
Than the fragile little butterfly…
Wings to unwind a universe.
He who will change something
Must break something
Sang none other
Than the fragile little chicken
To the other struggling egg.
And my mother placed her burning palm
On my heart, asked me to stay…
It was balm, but he who will change
Something must break something
A generation away
Sometimes you just have to
Break away.
The hoe cracked the hearth
The sower smiled
Rebirth cracked the palm kernel of death
Death learned from rebirth
About the quest for a higher birth
The reaper smiled.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
How many times do
You think you
Have lived?
Blind mole
I am tired of your arguments
Stray in your hole
Keep on laughing
At me –
The soft brown earth is not as thick
As my dense black skin –
I cannot hear you.
I cannot hear you in there
Yet I know you are out there.
Your recurring epitaph
Awaits again:
The grind
Did wring you, it ground you
Pension was indeed
Your resting place.
Your nesting place.
How many times do
You think you
Have died?
Just once more.
Just once more.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 