POEMS FROM THE INNER RIVER

It’s flowing beside me, the inner river, and I’m fishing poems from it everyday. This project is the English parallel to “Das Jahrzehnt der deutschen Dichtung”, also to be found daily on this blog.

Live while you’re alive, Che.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
26.05.2025

THE GREATER DEATH

Literature murders poetry
Fine Arts murders art
Education murders the spirit

The intellect stands victorious over the intuition
The dead over the living
The darkness over the light

Human is dead for now
Tomorrow human will die the greater death.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

TIRED OF WORDS

A moment of poems passes away
And the nostalgia doth arise
Always the same and always, I pray
That it again’ll tomorrow materialise
Cross my path, call of heaven
Breath of heaven, touch of heaven
Cross my path again, from heaven
Whisper someone, touch me, whisper, free me
Break me loose from the cycle of words
I want the Other Poem.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

ANGEL

I still think about you
Still remember your heart
Special it was, like a house of virtue
And, like all things special, it did up and depart

But the longing, the softening, the striving , the yearning
Some start the downing, some start the burning
But you by-passed the normal poles, and noiselessly, soft
Noiselessly opened and bore me aloft.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

ACTING

If you keep it free and open
It will find a friend
It will make a headway into
Yet another start

If you act like you were rhyming
Though you’re far from it
Those who dance along will wander
Why no-one else hears

The masterpiece within the picture,
Why nobody feels
The music in the melody
The magic in the air.

—————
che chidi chukwumerije
—————

THE HIDDEN FEATHER

The hidden feather
There and not there
Fluttering, silent, soft
Bearing a great thing aloft.

– che chidi chukwumerije.

UNFOLDING SHADOWS (A Duet)

Duet with Helenvalentina

On the morning I ached
For the memory of the night
When my soul within was stricken
Before ineffable light
And the face of one remembered
Was unutterably bright

In the mounts of memory
Hidden, this valley
Where you sang a sun
To birth, rise in glory
Spirit of immortality
Half-seen-and-unseen you pull me

From these ancient hallways
I witnessed the reign
Of a long yearned for god child
Returned to this plain
And I fell, not from weakness
But from fervour regained

And yet in truth we both know
‘Tis all half-truth and metaphor
Cloaking what it claims to unveil
Our thirst for less and more
Less of hide-and-seek
And more of flame and fervour

Ah and here the sweet pain
That rends through my soul
The numinous so fleeting
To encompass us whole
And yet then it’s just whispers
Where shadows unfold.

———————————————-
by Helenvalentina and Che Chidi Chukwumerije
———————————————-

JAZZ HOLE

I’m feeling down today
The perfect mood
For poetry

He’s played the music
So long
He’s lost in the music now

That musician on stage
Is an echo of the poetry
Eating me inside.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

MY POETRY BENCH

There is a graveyard thence
With benches placed all over
Where people come a-steady
To ponder life and death

There is a certain bench
Apart from every other
Where I sit when poetry
Takes clean away my breath.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

BUT

There are many roads
But only one will lighten your load
The question is
What price are you prepared to pay?

Life gave me a lemon tree
A pinch of love will feed the multitude
The bearer of the word will walk on wind
And disappear unseen, grateful to have simply been
Himself.

What price are you prepared to pay?

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.