What yesterday I pushed away
Returns today, stronger
With even more hunger
Songs that I must play.
I have to move
Fly like a dove
Driven by love
I have to remove
Myself from illusion
Confusion.
Unfinished Verses stare at me
Repeated Verses endlessly.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
His demons
Come straight from hell
Chase him everyday
He remembers the cries of the women
Children and all the others
Victims of his guns of war
The land is silent now
His conscience is loud
The demons won’t go away
They want to take him with them
Back to hell where he belongs.
The last thing he did
Before he disappeared into the depths of hell
Was to pray
Oh yeah he sent up a prayer
Of apology – no plea for mercy – just apology
For all the victims of his merciless guns
Before he with a bold heart faces his demons
And yes the demons
Dragged him down with them
To the bowels of hell
Where his evil had created them
And that was the last that was seen of him
And that was the last that was seen of him
Thousand of years have passed…
But now when I look I see
An angel hovering over the pits of hell
Looking for him, calling him, waiting for him…
Will he rise out again? You’ve done your time.
Rise up, rise up, repentant spirit
From out the pits of hell
Where you no longer belong
Come back to Earth and do it differently this time –
Birth. Rebirth.
A new child is born
An old soul has come back again
Do it better this time
Save lives, brother
Save lives, brother
Love they neighbour, man
A little child
I see it in your eyes
You’ve got a heart of gold
Knowing and old
Full of the mission to do something good
A little child
I see it in your eyes
Exorcism of the demons of old
Save lives, sister
Save lives, sister
Love they neighbour, woman.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
On the way to Falkenstein
I knew you were mine
On the way from Falkenstein
I knew you were mine
But when we stood side by side
Upon that castled immortality
I knew only that the great divide
Yawns yet ‘twixt longing and reality
And if we true will call this meeting our last
Then, woman, never lie away our past.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A life I’ve lived before?
Or just a summer lore?
These Cumbrian hills that float past me
Fade away, misty, like a memory
If greens could speak of all they hold
Unbroken sap, unspoken, old
Unwoken, untapped, a silent audience
Events absorbed in quiet clairaudience
What tales untold of eras lost
Would now unfold, unthawed of frost
Unbound by dust; behold, forever green
The mist has parted as though it had never been
Ullswater, whose water first watered your past
Whose feet were those that were the last
To tread that dry ground that is now your wet floor
Before that time vanished foreverevermore?
The boatride, like a gentle slide, into a strange intuition
A short sad season of startling fruition
Goodbye again, Watervalley, deep within your heart
Remember still my footsteps, there they did start
Mist and misty, mistier than thought
Misty mysteries yet they are not.
A heart is a storehouse of long forgotten memories
That sometimes arise cloaked as imagined stories
What do I have more precious than my heart,
My past’s library, my future’s chart.
Silently we walk, simple human beings
Yet mightier each than the sum of all worldly things.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
(One of my Lake District poems)
How do you stop loving someone? How do you forget her eyes and her face and her secret smile and the unwordable look she bears upon her countenance?
How do you stop loving someone? How do you forget the times shared? How do you forget the Love, the eternalness of your togetherness? How do you make it right forever?
How do you stop loving someone? How do you uproot love from your soul? A love that wants to remain. Someone who loves you so. A union that begs for fulfilment. How do you not continue an ancient story in a modern world? How does an old tune not give birth to a new tale? How does a stream die?? It just resurfaces in other places…
How do birds of one wing not visit heaven together? How does loneliness not seek itself? How does fire not burn? How do sowed seeds not grow? How can you restrain the moving sun, unless you first stop the rotation of the earth…? But then how so many other people die, how many other things are lost?
How do waterfalls desist from falling? Two elephants in one heart, two hearts in one elephant. If you kill the elephant and open the heart in order to understand this phenomenon, what if they all die, elephants and hearts?
How do you stop loving someone? I don’t know.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
It must have been on Castlerigg
Amidst the ancient stones
My spirit suddenly grew big –
Did I sense my old bones?
I felt that here within this circle
I have married you before
What some might call insensible
Or, being kind, a lore…
Why do I feel what I feel?
Your eyes tell me it’s real…
If you agree with me, then nothing else matters
Sacred are family matters –
I still see Castlerigg
The heart of a mighty circle
Of mountainous hills wise and big
Like a prototype stone circle
Built by Substantiate Beings
That walked the earth
Long before Human Beings
First came to birth.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije (Poems Inspired by the Lake District)
I am my own forerunner
My own ancestor
The reincarnation of myself
I am the roots of my own tree
The stem, the trunk, the branches and the leaves
The flower and the fruit
The source of my own seeds
I am the beginning of my self
And the continuation and the end
The original blame rests upon me
The final victory shall be my handiwork
I am the controller of my destiny
Nothing more, nothing less
Nothing else.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
(Image by kloxklox_com)
Love, mountain of salvation
For human and every nation
Fountain of water of life
In every joy and every strife
School for the commencement of tomorrow
Full of fulfilment, free of sorrow
So if I had another chance
I’d do it all again
For without this rhythmn, this chant, this dance
Life’s sure a lane, but a lonely lane.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije,
May 1990.
How many lives did you need
To come alive in this one?
How many graves are marked
With those names
Which you will never know again
Never bear again?
Countless and faded.
Death, that great equalizer
Will remix your cards again
So before your life be lived in vain
Make something good of this birth this time.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The pen is mightier
Than the sword
If only writers knew
The meaning of this word
Going forward, going backward
Those who seek vengeance
Through the use of the pen
Are writing their own sentence
Regret won’t heal the pain
Regret won’t heal the pain
My friend
So tread lightly in the rain
And softly sing
And softly sing
For when the verse is over
You’ll be the one to compose again
A new chorus to start over
And when you live again
Your life will be a book of stories
And everything you wrote
Will line your path with pain
Or shame or gladness or glory.
Some kill themselves by the sword
But most commit suicide by their own word.
Some live by the sword,
SOme die by the word
And vice versa.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 