Your love was most present
In my life’s soup
When you were quietly absent
Your sea is a strong wall
Too deep, too intense, too wide
I don’t want it all
A pinch of you
On my flaming restless tongue
My dear, will do
You salivate my secret cult
With your infrequent invisible visits
Like salt.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Kingdom of oil and salt
Swishing tales swipe the sand
Behind vanishing storytellers, nay, dreampreachers
With high-sounding verses
They promised us a great future
Where are they now?
Where are they now, to see us
Reaping locusts and riffling through
Sheaves of worrisome mirrors
For, how closely the future mirrors the past!
Eyeballs hypnosis of rearview mirrors
Nobody driving the car forward.
Too much salt!
Do you hear my tongue burning
A song of sadness into your ears?
Too much heat! To look back
While walking forward is folly
New generation, is folly.
New generation. This name mocks you
Like it mocked before your time
Every generation that came and left.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 