NEW THINGS

Environmental and spatial beauty start with Art and Imagination. When you imagine it, draw it, design it and then outwardly build it after that image – then you suddenly have outwardly what you crave and imagine inwardly.

As simple as this may sound, this is the key to quantum leaps and to infinite development. This is the assurance that the boundaries of Genius will always be crossed and thus extended intermittently as long as we continue to march through Time. Space is flexible, and bendable to Imagination and Inspiration.

New Nations will always arise from time to time; and groups of people will receive new insights into outworkings of the fundamental thought, and find a new characteristic of Matter and of engineering space – that is, they will find an old fact but it will seem new to them because it will supercede the knowledge available to them in their era.

The abstract is the Petri dish of the concrete, imagination is the fertile breeding ground of reality. To kill a people, kill their imagination and make them into a nation of copycats. Praise them when they copy others, and give them prizes, awards and honors when they copy others very well. But when they attempt to be innovative, to produce new thoughts, to toy with new ideas, to experiment with new possibilities, then ridicule them.

When they choose not only to copy or be inspired by that which is trending, but to create that which is different and not (yet) popular, when they decide not to follow follow, but to open new paths, then ostracize them, mock them, sideline them, punish them and hurt their ego and do not finance them. At the very least, ignore them. Soon they will abandon the path of difficult authentic growth and blend into the game of joining the train and going anywhere the train is going, but never going their own way or birthing new things.

But if you want to uplift a people, then liberate their spirit. Because human was not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath was made for human. If time waits for no-one, then no-one should wait for time either. It is not imagination that should adjust itself to reality, but reality should bend to imagination in order to keep on elevating itself. Matter, at its highest, can still only be the cloak of spirit. As the spirit wills it, so the universe will execute it reciprocally upon the spirit. Unfortunately, even when the spirit is willing, still the flesh – the brain, the earthling in flesh and blood – is weak.

That’s why we fight wars, and seek to oppress, dominate and ostracize each other. That is the origin of racism, bigotry and extremism. This is the cause of the stagnation of human civilization despite all illusions of technological flight. Weakness. It has its origin not in strength, but in weakness; inner weakness. The inability to really imagine and intuitively perceive Paradise and then to build it on Earth.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

FACING THE MUSIC EVERYDAY

Everything is an opportunity – and even an obligation – to practice the virtues, or attempt the resistance of the vices, and to reflect on the process, results and lessons of this self-struggle.

All the hustle and bustle of the everyday life, the cares, tears, wears, the moments and worries we share, the burdens we bear alone, the moments we fall and the moments we rise, the long phases in which we forget the heavenly contract and just engage in the hamster-run…

Everything has the one supreme purpose of polishing an inner person in us who often slumbers and who will surely consciously experience his or her own funeral one day, invisible to the mourners left behind, whether they believe it today or not.

The earthlife is so jam-packed with pressure, temptation and responsibility, leaving little or no time for the occupation with the growth of the spirit. Thus, this hustle and bustle, the pressure, temptations and responsibilities MUST be actually the very theatre of spiritual development – because life gives us on a daily basis no other.

Running from the world will not save you. You may need periods of detachment once in a while; but then you have to go back into the matrix again, and again, and again. Facing the world and dealing resolutely with the world will alone make you strong.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

REMEMBER

Sunday
My body has returned from Worship
My spirit not yet

The sounds around me are like a dream
Far away
Where sunrise is sunset

The home around me is
A faint reflection of another Home
I often forget.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

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.

MUSICIANS

When the sadness
Coloured the smile
Of the musician’s sunshine
I saw that his joy
Had just got deeper
And the unshed tears
Longing in his eyes
Were less bitter
Than they were bittersweet
To my ears
Music to my heart
Water to my soul – his sorrow
Became the joy of my spirit flame.
That was when I saw him smile
That broke my heart.

– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.

REFLECTIONS ON TRANSITION

The earth is the mother
And the physical body the womb
In which the soul incubates and grows
Before birth into the beyond.

Each time we on earth are born
We have but been sunk
As a seed into a surrogate mother’s womb
To grow there a little strong.

Death is but the midwife
Dying the throes of labour and pain
Someone misses you each time you are born
Something receives you back at death again.

And all the things you did on earth
Shall be as a dream in the womb
So heed your spirit even while in the flesh
For it alone remembers its home.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

IT IS WELL

When blood like a river
Attendeth my soul
When mirrors
Turn backwards and cold

Whatever my lot
Let the past work away
It is well, it is well
With my goal.

Out of hell, burning bell
Wring my soul, ring my soul
Though we fell, now ’tis well
With our goal.

CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.

* inspired by Spafford’s 19th century eponymous hymn.

LOOKING FOR ART (A Duet)

van gogh 1

There are days
Grey is my colour
My fist is an empty net
My loneliness is trapped within
My lost lines

There are nights
Black is my colour
My mind is full of melancholy
My heart remembers it’s broken
My hope gone

Blue is the island
An oasis of seeking shade
Shade of hue and colours somewhere
On the horizons of intuition
Beckoning

Yellow is the fire
A symbol of promised growth
Rays invisible yet warming
The seed pushing towards light
Determined

For in my every dark hour
Every colour is comfort
Every form is transformation
Spirit, never stop looking
For Art.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije and Dormis Aeternitas

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This Poem is a Duet I wrote together with Dormis Aeternitas, a wonderful poet.

Visit his blog to read more of his enchanting work.

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Picture: Section of Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”
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ROUGH FRUITS

I need everything
And I need dearth
I squeeze the leaven
To open the girth
My hour is eleven
Narrow, not straight
Rough sun having
Your fun on my mirth
When you burn my raven
Rekindle my hearth
I need Heaven
But I also need Earth.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

AUTHORITY WITHIN

There is a poet
He lives in me
I am his host and his prisoner –

He is not married to my wife
He is not related to my family members
He does not come from my country
He does not work for my employer
He is a recluse
A hermit
Who lurks sometimes seen sometimes unseen
In the waters within my heart
I heard his name
They called him Spirit.

He looks at me
With his burning eyes
Only when he has something to say
Then, calling my name, he commands:
“Pen, write…”
And I write.
And that’s all I know about him.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.