How are you today?I’m still hurting from yesterday I don’t know what to say I’m very sad even when I play Lord, heal my broken heart, I pray I’m lost, I can’t find the way… - I’m fine, thank you And you? Thank you I’m fine too. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
Silence
CRACKED HALO
The loudest silence
Is two people alone in a room
Or in a relationship
But not knowing with whom
They are each talking
So they talk louder, hoping for an echo
And then they stop talking
For there is no answer to a broken Hello.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river
TALK LESS OF TALKING
How do you move from talking everyday To never talking at all? Say. Say. Say. Because speaking about each Problem, the say, is how to begin to solve them. But what if speech is the problem and Silence is the only solution close at hand? What if talking everyday is too much And the pauses bring the deeper touch? Che Chidi Chukwumerije
CONSTANT CRY
He lived with us very briefly
When I was still a child
My father’s elder brother
When we prayed before our meals
And made the sign of the cross
He teased us, Protestants, about having gone Catholic
When he shaved in the morning
He explained to us the mysterious science
Of shaving stick, cream and blade
Other than that he didn’t talk much
A quiet quiet quiet man
Hurt no-one, thoughtfully kept to himself
Very different from the others
Never preached, never argued, never moralised
Never scolded, just silently observed
Three decades have passed
Rarely our paths ever crossed again
A short Hello each time, nothing more
I’m still trying to understand
The pain I’ve felt all morning today
Since I heard of Uncle Joe’s death
It doesn’t make sense
Someone I hardly knew
Just a few childhood memories
Just a few memories
That remind me of a time
Rich in memories and childlike insight
And a few memories
Of a quiet adult who never found a voice
In a culture of big egos, loud voices and aggression
His silence was louder, calmer, more lasting
So deep that only his death
Would open the deep wound of memory in my heart
His middle name was Ahamefula
Meaning “May my name not get lost” –
No, dear Uncle, it will not.
In loving memory of
Joseph Ahamefula Chukwumerije
1935 – 2013
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SEX IS NOT THE ONLY FORM OF INTIMATE CONVERSATION
Sex is not the only form of conversation, connection, exchange and sharing, in the course of Intimacy between people. There are other options that may fulfil the need for temporary or permanent oneness more effectively than sexual intercourse, depending on the chemistry between, the story around and the needs of and nature within the people involved.
1. THE NATURE OF CONVERSATIONS
The nature of verbal conversations between people can sometimes be a more powerful form of intimacy than sex, giving room for an inner release of pressures that not even sex can achieve. This often happens between people who feel comfortable enough with each other, or find the courage, to share information about their vulnerabilities with one another, and have found a language in which to do so. Some friendships bear this Quality intrinsically within.
2. SHARED SILENCE
There are some people whose most intimate exchange happens in deeply felt moments of shared Silence. This silence is like a continuum in which their thoughts and intuitive perceptions merge and shape one another. The people involved always emerge from such moments with enriched souls. These are people who of one another often say: we like to be silent together. Silence is their bond.
3. HONEST QUARRELS
A good quarrel – extreme, hard, honest, totally baring – is sometimes the best form of conversation and the most intimate way to exchange the most revealing information between two people or a set of people. I became acquainted with some of my closest friends after a quarrel. I met my wife through a quarrel. It was the quarrel that paved the way for the love. Quarrels are often missed opportunities when the people involved, while quarrelling, are – for lack of trust – not honest with themselves and with the other person. And yet sometimes the fundamental or temporary chemistry between two people is such that only an honest and brave painful quarrel will fulfil the function of the intimate conversation they need in order to take their understanding of one another to the next level.
4. HOMELINESS AND HOME
There are some people with whom we share the most open exchanges and most intimate conversations because the context of our chemistry and the base of our bond is a certain sense of home or homeliness, the type in which the real us feels ‘at home’ when together with these people. Some share this connection from birth, some acquire this in the course of a relationship or a friendship that makes them feel at home with each other. And this sense of home does not require of them to do or say anything extra or particular, or require another form of intimacy. The sense of being at home while together is in itself already their intimate conversation.
5. DISTANCE
There is a curious intimacy in distance that sometimes comes into play between certain people. It is delicate and fine, but also very intense, very strong and very revelatory. Invasion without invasiveness. Penetration without intrusion. An all-encompassing knowing, full of the most sensitive respect. The power of distance as a mediator and form of intimacy is often underrated. And yet there are some people with whom we can only enjoy a feeling and a sense of an intimate conversation when we find and keep the right distance between ourselves. Sometimes such people know us more intimately than the ones closest to us and may sometimes enjoy our rarest trust. It is also not by chance that people sometimes reveal themselves to and connect with less restriction and more satisfaction with Strangers than with those they know – exactly because of the fact that they are, and will remain,… strangers.
6. SEX AS A DEPTH OF COMMUNICATION
Voluntary sex is different things to different people – a power-game, a playful act; or for some it’s deeper, a level of release. There are people however who, apart from or in addition to this, experience sex as a form of conversation. An intimate way of sharing self-knowledge and exchanging sensitive wordless information about what we are in the primitive depths of our fundamental personalities. Just as sex can be used to tell lies, project a falsehood and hide secrets, it can also be used – by people whose bond trigger that chemistry – to communicate. People who experience sex solely in this way have a satisfying sense of communication, or frustrating non-communication, in connection with every moment of sexual intimacy.
7. A SHARED GOAL
There may be truth to the saying that there is nothing that binds people together as primordially and intuitively as a deeply-felt and shared Goal. The stronger and deeper the love and loyalty they have for the cause, the more this condition possesses the ability to break all barriers between them and link inner parts of their hidden selves with one another on levels which are never activated in their dealings with other people. That is to say: when people love the same thing and work passionately towards the same purpose, it wavelengths them into a place where only they can go together. The entire context of their relationship with each other becomes determined by that for which they share their truest love and most quiet loyalty, to which they have pledged the very essence their life, and it becomes the underlining hearth of their bond, their quiet intimate conversation.
The individual natures of each person and the chemistry between people, as well as the nature of intimacy possible, mutually desired or needed between them, is what determines the form of interchange between them which permits the realisation of this intimacy.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Undulating Plains
HURTING
When will he stop
Persecuting that guitar
His voice is hoarse
It hurts her
It digs a hole in her armour
Roughly
And scoops her out
Hoarsely
I wish I could remember him
In my dream tonight
When silence is wall
Enclosing me and she is gone
His voice is gruff
A street musician
Enjoying his moment on stage
Roughly.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
GOODBYE, LAUGHTER
Have you ever listened to
The night talking to itself
While you lay there beside one another
And not a word occurred to you?
You see the end approaching
Like a boat coming to the shore
To take you away
Away from a laughter called love
And as your worlds drift apart
In the space of one short night
Strange, but no words occur to you
To adequately say goodbye.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE BREAK-UP
The worst pain I ever felt
Was once when I embraced someone
And my embrace, she said,
Made her think of someone else.
Some things you should keep to yourself,
Yet it’s better when they’re spoken out
And it’s best of all when they hurt like hell.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
FREED
Hardly a night goes by
Hardly a breath flows, an evening
Melts
Without this thought
You brighten my life
Curly windows
When the crowds are many
I am alone
I wanted to be a nightingale
To be a flower
I wanted to be a star
The evening wind blows
I am human. Let it be…
Sometimes again
Freed from the city’s shackles
Hackles, hard tackles
I am green, bright yellow, blue as sky
Glad am I.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SILENCE WILL ROLL INTO SILENCE
Silence will roll into silence
When your heart, for miles,
Lonely, clothed in the essence
Of sorrow shed in every sense
But one…,
Arises before your countenance
And, despite sorrow, smiles –
Fresh Food for your sustenance,
Fresh impetus for the long distance
You run…
Do you hear the rolling silence?
If you listen and listen hard
To Silence, the deeper bard;
Just listen, listen in hard…
Do you hear the rolling silence?
Silence will roll into silence
When the pain in you
Has crossed the line into convalescence
And the Horizon’s in view.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 