Did you know that Smiling makes you happy When you’re feeling crappy? Did you know that? I bet you’re smiling now. And if you were feeling crappy, Now you’re feeling a little happy - I bet you’re smiling now. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
smile
SHARE YOUR LIGHT
Sometimes it‘s just a word that’s missing At the right time and everything goes wrong Hurting sounds like hissing Caring sounds like dissing Whispering sounds like kissing And confirms what you knew all along. But someone will cross your path today Who needs a smile Someone crying for help will be in your way For a little while Just a word, a look, a smile, a friendly touch Will help them another mile. Share your night and your fright Share your might and your right Share your sight and your insight And share your plight and your flight Share your fight and your bite Share your height - and share your light. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
JUST SMILE
Smiling makes you happy
Happiness makes you smile
So, just smile.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
WHERE ARE YOU?
Where are you?
There is a song in my head
Yearning to be sung to you
There is a thirst in my Soul
Waiting to be quenched by you
There is a smile in my heart
Longing to be smiled at you
So where are you?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
OUR HOUSE
A smile is a gift-wrapped heart
A heart is an unspoken smile
You grow on me
Windows open up too
A transparent pane of glass
I see you through
Houses head upward
But we speak one tongue
This time. We change hearts
Like we change lanes –
We grow on us.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORLD AROUND YOU?
Music made me
A bird saved me
A smile undid me
A woman slew me
A friend betrayed me
And I dug myself out of the Grave.
A wound bled me
A sword healed me
A dream baffled me
A heart became me… became I…
A Call reached me
Here, there and everywhere –
Now, tell me
If you understand humanity yet?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SPIRIT SLEEP
A smile is made up of many wounds
A road is the sum of innumerable restless feet
Love is the pain that pleasures
And victory is defiance in the heart of defeat
But what is spirit?
Spirit is
The stranger that walks the earth
For whom death is birth
Sleepwalker swaying at deep’s edge
Unfulfilled, the promise, unremembered, the pledge.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SEVENTEEN POEMS
If I wrote seventeen poems
In one word
Would you understand my language?
If I wrote one word
Sung one love-song
In seventeen poems
Would you understand my language?
What if they were eight?
What if they were eighteen?
If every human smile were a poem
Every laugh a song
Every look a promise
If every human word were silence
You would not need seventeen poems
To understand me
Just one.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I SAW A TEMPTER
I heard a whisper
Which made more sense than it could have
And less sense than
It did
I felt a touch
Which was more intimate than it could have been
And less intimate than
It was
I met a stranger
Who looked more familiar than he should have
And less familiar than
He did
I perceived an odour
Which smelled nicer than it must have
And fouler than
It could
And then I saw a tempter
Who seemed exactly like I knew
A tempter ought not to be
Yet I knew it was temptation
Because it never answered my smile
Not the smile you see on my face
But the smile
That lives, always silent, in my heart
And the tempter
Does not answer this smile
Because how can you answer
What you don’t hear?
The silent smile who waits so gentle
Resides in everybody’s heart,
And anything that answers not my smile
Is not mine.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 