What are words worth On this lonely earth? Actions seem more honest But they also lie the best. You don’t know what to believe - Even silence too can deceive. Only what you intuitively perceive Will in the end be your reprieve. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
thoughts
I DREAM EVERY TIME I FALL ASLEEP
I dream every time I fall asleep And it’s always one adventure or the other; Conversations with beloveds I keep, My best friend, my father, my brother, And strangers too with whom I laugh and weep And fight and love and comfort one another; The dangers are real, the emotions are deep, Every fear, every tear, every worry and bother; At times I weightless fly, or I burdened creep, Through encounters that liberate or smother, But I’m always conscious even in the Deep, As awake as a baby born out of its mother. For I have vows to keep and sowed seeds to reap - And before it gets lighter it will get darker - And miles to go and never really sleep. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
FOREST WALK
A stroll through the curious trees Respectfully quiet to put you at ease What you hear is the noonday breeze Tell us your thoughts, human, if you please. But you hear neither the watching trees Nor the quietly questioning noonday breeze All you know - correct me, if you please - Is that in your heart you simply feel at ease. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
WORLD OF THOUGHTS
Imagine if there were an invisible war taking place In the world of thoughts, A carnage whose only trace Is this disharmony on Earth That evades all correction Whose roots seem omnipresent And elude detection. A parallel world, a prototype, The way we think, our inner life, Create the future we must face, our world of woe and strife. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
OUR MINDS
Boarding another person’s Train of thoughts… What a ride. Places and passengers of all sorts - It’s hard to know At which station to jump off Before you go mad Without missing all the good stuff. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
THE THOUGHTS THAT ATTACH
I‘m looking for the pain I can’t find it in all its usual hiding places I go inside, check again the box of fears, the memory full spaces But I can’t find the rain. Letting go of the thoughts that attach Not every perfect catch is a perfect match I cannot find the pain. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
MAN-MADE MOONS
They will build a city
And congest it with laws and dreams
Then they will reduce themselves to the size of the city
And fish their thoughts out of its streams.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A CERTAIN NEWNESS
New thoughts arising in colours becoming
New paths all over, all over my path
New answers falling in patterns benumbing
New friends with old faces
New ties with old places
New visions bring a new sense of belonging
Newness and calmness out from a new bath
Of old traits are few traces
Of new veins are full vases.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
BONDING
You know those walks we took
Down untarred streets and red
And brown was sand and book by book
We discussed all we’d read
You know those suns that set
As quietly we’d gaze
With hearts that knew to not forget
The orange tempered rays
You know those thoughts we thought
And knew not their origin
Yet marvelled side by side at what
Hearts bonded could be given
Nations will rise and fall
Sages will come and go
But Friendship will outlast them all
Through you, this I now know.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A DREAMER’S MIND
I see a mountain
In the distance
A mysterious mind
Over matter
The birds that circle its heights
Like higher thoughts
That hover above a dreamer’s mind
Seeking to make contact
For oft the thoughts we think
And think are ours
Are borrowed
Upon a lazy afternoon, somewhere
In Creation.
A child sits somewhere unseen
Locked in an old body
Each time it smiles
Rainbows and rainbows of new thoughts
Surge out, unite, swing forth, to go seek out
Like-minded wonderers dreaming lazily
Upon a quiet moment, somewhere
In Creation
Blindly receiving the seeds of new thoughts
And thinking the thoughts they think
Are theirs alone
As if the mind of a dreamer
Were not a fertile garden too.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 