It is love.
You cannot
Mathematize it.
It will
Mesmerize
Scandalize
Legalize
Illegalize
And always leave Questions
Behind.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
spirit
SLIPPERY
I have seen
That Evil
Is deep
It has silenced me
For where it nests
Is the noiseless depth
Pay no attention to my words
They are a distraction
If you want to hear my message
Listen to my silence
My words will show you the way into my silence
Where I talk of treachery no words can describe.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
DYING STARS
In our hearts we feel it sometimes, we know it fullwell, even when we deny the feeling to everybody, including ourselves and our best friends, yet we know: the star is dying…
There you see it, in the spiritual firmaments of the decaying soul. It used to be a bright star, friendly and confident, and pure as miraculous crystal. Once, it shone and sparkled, twinkled and flared and brightly laughed like a flaming eye in the skyscapes of who you truly are… in the skylines of your sensitivity and consciousness.
What is that song which just faded out? It was not any ordinary song, nay. It was the star that lived, and died…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
NOSTALGIA’S DONE
Just now I saw a morning star, luminous in the sky high up above me. And then suddenly I see it no more. Blue-grey clouds are journeying past in silent, ominous solemnity. Morning has dawned. The birds, they are a-singing. Early people are writing their feet into the road… and I am sitting outside, writing poetry and pretending it is prose.
Perhaps by the time I am through, and raise my head anew, the clouds would have gone completely by, and my star will be visible to me again. But if not, yet still I carry within me the picture of my morning star, as luminous in my heart as it was luminous in the sky.
I suppose this is what they call Nostalgia.
Now, see: the sun is rising, and the light is come again. Star, sun and light. And there is spirit inside of me – spirit and love.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
HISTORY AND DESTINY
Plenty of questions but no gaps, only seeming gaps – but how would you know unless you first tried to fill the gaps in answer to your questions? Then you fathom that you are the gap, you are the question, and the answer rests in you.
Plenty of questions, but not all are gaps. Plenty of gaps, but only some are visible, while the rest, the sleeping questions, are still waiting for you tomorrow. You don’t even know your deeper questions yet, the ones that will really tear you out of yourself and make you a part of something bigger than you could ever conceive of today.
Because you are the gap and the question, you are the answer, the future and the fate. And the more you find yourself, the more you find your questions. And the more you find yourself, the more you find your answers. Until there are no gaps left, and everything becomes simply the story.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
AND YOU SHALL FIND
Nothing that comes, unspoiled
From the spirit
Is empty
It might take people two decades
Or two centuries
Or two millennia to understand it
But they will
Because, like an immortal light
The deeper the darkness
The brighter the flame
Until, one day
People take notice, stop, and ask…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
MASKING MASKS
What you see is but a mask, not a face, not the true face, but a mask, a facade, masking the first mask, the true mask which once upon a time was the face of a human soul. But now it’s a mask, the real mask, masking nothing again but emptiness. The mask becomes the life, the life becomes the mask, masking everything, but unable to mask our emptiness.
So when you finally succeed in unmasking one, it would do you good to bear in mind that the face you discover underneath is again nothing but another mask. And you keep unmasking them, one mask after another, one lost dream after another, one tomb after another.. and all you see are masks, masking masks, round and round the mulberry bush. And when you finally begin to ponder and wonder: But where then is the human, the wearer of all these masks? Where are we? What are the masks hiding, then, if all we encounter are masks?…
Then, dear friend, you must understand that the ugliest of all these masks is now the human being himself, and what we are hiding is the fact that we have lost our true face forever.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
IF THERE BE
If there be a she
Where is she?
If there was a she
Where was she?
If there be a he
Which is he?
If there was a he
When was he?
If there be a we
What are we?
If there was a we
Wherefore were we?
If there be an I
Why am I?
If there is goodness in the human race
If there is love in the human heart
If there is hope in the human being
Why are we still not there
Where we once were
When we had goodness and love and hope
In our hearts
On our tongues
And as the work of our hands…?
If I have a friend
Please help me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
INTO THE SECOND CALM
A period of difficulty, well endured with reflection and honesty, will awaken calm within the soul. Calm brings clarity.
If you continue to rise higher while calm, you will one day break into a second world of utter confusion which jumps upon you just when your calm reaches its peak. This second confusion is the most difficult path, because it confounds your new knowledge and laughs at your newfound calm. At its height, you will lose all hope.
If, however, you remain calm, even in the heart of your confused hopelessness and hopeless confusion, something New will awaken within and overtake you, and set you free, reborn. Because from the valley the next step is upwards, provided you have not first buried yourself in dejection in the valley.
Even when there is no hope, yet continue to hope. Even when you are broken, and rebroken, yet trust in life. – And you shall enter into the Second Calm. And, come what may, nothing and nobody can take away this Calm from you, because it is the other side of pain, where spirit dies no more.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
HOW DO YOU STOP LOVING SOMEONE?
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.
