TRUTH AS INTIMACY

The greatest Act of love and respect I can show a human being is to tell the person the truth. There is nothing worse I can do to you, or you can do to me, than to tell each other a lie or withhold the truth from one another when one asks for it. I don’t know about you, but I need truth like a drug and a medicine between me and the people close to me. It is everything. No matter what that truth is, I don’t really care. Even if it is a truth that will hurt me, disgust me, break me, shock me, kill me, withholding it from me or lying to me about it will put me in a worse hell and deeper anguish when I find out or if I sense it. If you’re close to me, don’t lie to me. My respect for you is more greatly diminished by dishonesty than by whatever it is you did that you’re trying to hide from me. Truth bonds me strongly to love.

Truthfulness is the deepest form of intimacy that I understand. If you are close to me and I am close to you, then just know this and be prepared for it: I will not lie to you. I will tell you the truth. If you don’t want to hear the truth, then don’t ask me. I can’t lie to the people I love. If I lie to you, if I withhold the truth from you (unless I’m doing it temporarily until we’re in a place and moment I can tell you), then it means that you are not close to me. And, conversely, if you lie to me, if you withhold the truth from me, then to me it means that you don’t or no longer love me or I’m not close to your heart. Some people think it’s the opposite: they withhold painful truths from the person they love, so as not to hurt the person. But if you do that to me, then it’s either you don’t really love me or you actually want to hurt me down the line.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

WORDS WORTH LITTLE

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

THE POWER IN THE COURAGE TO BE TRUTHFUL

Truth is so powerful. There is almost nothing
That you cannot forgive a truthful person.
It’s a strange phenomenon. What is hurting
You is healing you, is teaching you a lesson.
Even while suffering, you can’t stop trusting.

Something about them awakens respect in us.
Truthful people fascinate the coward in us,
Inspire the warrior in us, touch the human in us.
In the depth of their sin, yet they carry the cross.
Even at their worst, they’re still the best of us.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

THOSE WHO SEE THROUGH YOU

Good liars are used
To being believed
So they get confused,
Irritated, aggrieved,
When they meet someone
By whom their well-conceived
Lies, deception and con
Are not well-received;

Someone who sees through them deeply,
Like a radar, stubbornly and unerringly,
And refuses to be bought by them cheaply,
But demands the real them unsparingly.

The real them, the higher You,
The deeper fruit of your true history -
Be brave with me, trust me, be true.
Let that be our bond, and our mystery.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

SPEAK YOUR MIND

You need to speak your mind
Or you will not be free
It will eat you up inside and grind
Away at your sanity.

Say what you really believe
Articulate what you really want
Your Inner piece shall grant you reprieve
When people’s reaction be blunt.

Truth is better than art
Honesty shines brighter than beauty
Your inner voice wants to chart
A path to peace of mind and to Liberty.

Speak your mind before you die.
If your heart moves your mind spiritually
Speak your mind unless you’ll die
Literally and figuratively.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TRUTH IS FOR THE BLIND

Only the blind can speak the truth
Caring not where it lands
Seeing not where it opens wounds
Even in one’s Beloved’s own hands

Only the blind can follow the truth
Minding not where it leads
Seeing not that an abyss sometimes looms
For people, like themself, of honest deeds

Only the blind can bear the truth
Unbothered by its origin
Seeing not the size of the mountain it moves
Or the people and things it’s crushing

Only the blind can see the truth
No matter how bright and blinding its light
For the truth-loving heart is forever full
Of bold and unfailing insight.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

TRAVELLER TRUTHS

The Truth can only be found
By those who are seeking it
A mistake can only be learned from
By those who are making it
Full exposure is only feared
By those who are faking it
A road can only be understood
By those who are taking it
The Truth can only be echoed
By those who are speaking it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

EASTER

Tear the woods open wide
It is a painting windowed in our dream
Spear not the canvas to the side
The blood waters a never-ending stream
That will move mountains on Sunday
And roll a rock downhill
Into the valley of time we chime Monday
Death is dead. Peace, be still
The innocent should never be crucified
While the guilty die on their pen
Never was indignity this undignified
Justice thus unjustified by unmanly men
The innocent will rise again
Broken the frame of your crown of lies
Sunrays that fall like drops of rain
A Spirit is born when a man dies.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

QUOTES ON LIES, ERRORS AND TRUTH

“Mother always told me: If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it doesn’t sound good to you, it won’t sound good to no-one else.”
– Leroy Robert ‘Satchel’ Paige

“When one has one’s hand full of truth, it is not always wise to open it.”
– French proverb

“Tell your friend a lie. If he keeps it secret, then tell him the truth.”
– African proverb

“Nothing hurts a new truth more than an old error.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“Nothing does Reason more right than the coolness of those that offer it. For truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.”
– William Penn

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
– Mark Twain

“Truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.”
– William Blake

“The worst you can do to truth is to cloth it in lies – you can never undo it anymore.”
– African proverb

“Follow not truth too near the heels, lest it dash out thy teeth.”
-George Herbert

“I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me.”
– Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth; but most times he will pick himself up and continue on.”
– Sir Winston Churchill

“My way of joking is to tell the truth.
That’s the funniest joke of all.”
– Muhammad Ali

“Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.”
– Pablo Picasso

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to suppress dissent; for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie. And thus, by extension: the Truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
– Joseph Goebbels (Propaganda Minister, Third Reich)

“Often times, to win us to our harm
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence.”
– William Shakespear (Macbeth)

“When you shoot an arrow of truth, dip its point in honey.”
– Arabian proverb

“Tell the truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.”
– Emily Dickinson

“There is no story that is not true. Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.”
– Chinua Achebe

“What is truth?”
– Pontius Pilate

“The greatest truth is the simplest one.”
– African proverb

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IS HELL THE WAY TO HEAVEN?

Never gonna teach nobody
Never gonna preach the Word
To no damn soul

I’m damned myself
Tired of pretending
To know the way to heaven

Maybe everybody should just
Go to hell – then we’ll all grasp
The way to heaven.

– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.