There are some people Who just don’t deserve good people, Yet good people will be meet them Because they’re a part of the system; There’s nothing you can do about that. As long as you walk this earth, You deserve every experience you get; You signed up for it before birth And now you have to run the gauntlet - There’s nothing you can do about that. Welcome to the school of maturing, Of pain, temptation, of debt incurring - But you CAN conquer after long enduring. Now I don’t know if you find this reassuring, But there’s nothing you can do about that. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
people
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
POEMS DON‘T CHANGE
Places change people
People change places
Places change people
People change places
Races change people
People change races
Races change people
People change races
Faces change people
People change faces
Faces change people
People change faces
The person who started this poem
Is not the person who finished it.
Poems change people –
But people don‘t change poems.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
MUSIC PEOPLE
MUSIC
PEOPLE
LANGUAGE
UNDERSTOOD
FOR ONE
MOMENT
ONE MANKIND
ONE SPIRIT
1 LOVE.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE PRESENCE
NEWLY THE sun shone anew. Happy the multitude was to see again their surroundings. But where were they? A no-land. Only space and space and space. But no footprints and not a voice on the wind.
We seek the voices, we hear the silence. The multitude is faced with the choice – to turn inwards or to turn outwards. The multitude turned inwards and became a nation. Generations later, the nation turned outwards and faced the world.
Thus was the first Pride born. For the nation was too much for the world.
Let us leave the world and the nation, the multitude, the space and the silence, and look at the street. A busy street. Hawkers, traders, pedestrians, beggars, jam the sidewalks. Busses, cars, motorcycles, cram the roads.
Above them, an unsmiling face, almost but not as large as the sky, looks down guardingly upon them. The face is not the face of a loving protector, that much can be deduced from its features. It is the face of a prison warden. Emotionless and evil. Because the prison is his.
A face turns upwards. One of the people on the street has a strange sensation hard to describe. She looks up, sees the face, screams and collapses. People walk by her. Others stop. She is dead. They cross themselves, mutter prayers and walk away.
Let us go back to the nation. The nation has arisen. It is all-powerful. It runs like a well-oiled machine, a high-tec computer. It shut itself out of the world for generations. It let nothing in, not even nature. Now it is ready to face the world. It towers over the rest of the world and opposes all who seek to break away from this new sway.
Others raise their gazes too, see the face of the guardian of evil. They collapse and die too, just like the woman. But the souls of the dead have risen too, they mingle amongst the living and strengthen invisibly their resolve. And sometimes now when I look up at the giant face of the prison-guard in the dark dark clouds above us, I see a slightly worried look in his eyes. Things are going wrong. He feels it. But he cannot put his finger on it.
Why are people looking up?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 