truth

TENDER SPOTS

~ Che ~ 3 Comments

There is in me a very soft spot for naked tables and chairs, pens and empty sheets of paper, and a feeling that if I do not write the poem write now, it will never come again. It is a very special soft spot and very dear to me, sees me through lonely nights and empty restless days and times of unfocused focus and focused unfocus and is much better than many other a pleasure.

The heart is inside, the voice outside, and a strong voice without a heart is as baseless as the pointlessness of a voiceless heart, burning and knowing and mute. I have a very soft spot in me for that quick tender urge that would have me run again, a pen upon waiting sheets, a snow-lion stalking buried treasures, a singer learning and singing new songs, simultaneously.

Water is the king and when your heart runs like water, poetry becomes an uncheckable force – everywhere you hear it… everywhere you hear it. It follows you, it enters you, it captures you until you have mastered yourself in it, then it sets you free to roam again. Yes, this is my jungle.

I have in me a so soft spot for that glowing star, yonder flame that has decided to call me Home. Yes, Song, let it ring, and with my life I will follow, poet and musician and man. There was a beginning but, I vow, there shall be no end to eternal tenderness inside you and me.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

ALL THE THINGS THAT THE WORDS DO NOT SAY

~ Che ~ 18 Comments

I wish I were a painter, to draw the pictures and paint the concepts that words cannot hold – my words. I believe there are greater poets now and ever, better writers, greater wordists, because I’ve tried and tried but still I’ve not succeeded in telling you what I know. I cannot form it in words, I cannot form it in thoughts, I just know it and understand that it is the world of things which the words have never said.

You cannot tell a woman that you love her. The moment you say it, it is gone. You can tell a man the truth, but you cannot tell him what the truth is – only he must find it out for himself one day. You cannot describe beauty in words. Even the beauty of a beautiful poem cannot be put into poetry again. You did it without thinking – and the moment you started thinking, you did not see it again.

Think a little – little thoughts…

A picture is still worth a thousand and one words. A woman wounded me mortally, yet try as I did, I could not explain in words what she did, and yet I know it Clearly.

You can never change anybody but yourself, because you are the one person to whom you can speak without words, always. And once there is truth, then there is nothing more to say. You can only say the truth, my brother, but you cannot make anybody understand. But, take heart… silence teaches the last lesson finally finally finally finally.

All the things that the words do not say, silence says always.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

AT NIGHT…

~ Che ~ 4 Comments

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Truth undresses
Conscience pricks
Contemplation caresses
What conversation can’t fix.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

HEARTBREAK AND PROMISES, TOGETHERNESS, FAREWELLS AND SILENCE

~ Che ~ 4 Comments

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To make a promise to love another person, forever, and then to break this promise and say, Goodbye baby… awakens within the hearts of everybody who hears of it a memory of their own broken and unspoken promises.

Noise everywhere. Noise in my head. Noise even in the centre of silence. Lovers are what sages once were, and vice versa. Heartbreak and promises, togetherness, farewells and silence are all trying to resolve themselves within our hearts.

I should never have told you that I loved you, but how could I but not tell the truth? Evermore I understand the importance of silence. Our hearts are broken in silence: a small token to pay for the new powers which soon and steadily awaken in silence within us.

One who can bear the pain of heartbreak; one who can say goodbye and yet always be there; one who can preserve promises in silence unbroken; will read these lines with a knowing smile.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

WRITERS AND LOVERS

~ Che ~ 32 Comments

I’ve never dated a writer
I wonder what it’s like
To both be awake, thinking
And writing in the night.
Will we share each other’s thoughts
Or keep our thoughts to ourselves?
Will we rejoice together
Or envy each other’s success?

Who will draw from whom
When both are needy?
Who will be the calming pole
When the writer gets crazy?
Who will write the greater poem
Into the book of life?
Greater than words on paper
And conquer inner strife.

Read my palm, it’s full of lines
Do not read between the lines
Between the lines are just packs of lies
Cleverly waiting to bait a writer’s eyes.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

NEVER STOP SEEKING THE GRAIL

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Works that stay
And show the way
To travelling spirits
On the right road
Long after I myself have passed
This way.

Not works of vanity
Nor dance of insanity
But honesty to my spirit
Who drank whilst thirsty
And knows the source of eternal water
The Grail’s Fountain.

Some seek politics
Some seek academics
Some believe in race issues
Some ideology or religion
And many will seek only pleasure
And self.

But through history
An inner mystery
Occupies all human spirits
It doesn’t die or fade –
The urge to know the true meaning of
The chalice, the stone, the mystery, the fountain,
The beginning, the origin, the genesis, the portal, the Grail.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

BITTER BREAD

~ Che ~ 6 Comments

When they seek bread
You hesitate to speak
Of the bread of life

For they look you in the eye
And say
Can’t you see that I’m hungry?

How can you make
The spirit strong
When the body is still so weak?

And so you fall silent
And wait with the rest,
For the rest, in peace…

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

RIGHT IS MIGHT

~ Che

Might is not right –
Right is might.

This right is not the opppsite of left
Is not the right of fraternity bereft

This right is conscience
Is humanity in its essence

And the path to its Height.
– This right Is MIGHT.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THE GIRL WHO SAW TRUTH

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There was a girl
Who read the story of the Wild-Horse Mountain
And who then went to find
The writer of the story
And question him thus:

GIRL:
Is this story true, of the lady who went to the Island of Wild-Horse Mountain and found the winged horses?

POET:
Yes, it is true.

GIRL:
Really?

POET:
Truly.

GIRL:
How do you know?

POET:
Because after the lady had visited the Land of Tomorrow awhile with Sram, he flew her in the night back home to our land again, and the next morning she told us the story…

GIRL:
What happened next?

POET:
Well, nobody believed her… except I. I did.

GIRL:
But why?

POET:
Why did I believe her?

GIRL:
No. Why did nobody else believe her?

POET:
Well… because they searched for proofs… and found none, at least none that made any sense to our minds. Upon hearing her story, we all sailed over to the Island of Wild-Horse Mountain, to see if we could corroborate her story. Also the other six people were still missing and we wanted to find them. But we found Nothing. No horses, no green valley, no horse-prints in the ground, anywhere, and no bodies… not the bodies of the six missing people, or bones, clothes, shoes, bags, articles, anything! All we saw, on the shore of the desolate, rocky island, was a beached boat. So, the people said she was mad. They came up with the theory that she had run mad and killed her friends at sea, or she had lost her friends at sea, which in turn had driven her crazy…

GIRL:
What?!

POET:
Yes, indeed. In the end, they put her in an asylum, where she finally died…

GIRL (sobbing):
What country is this wicked place?

POET:
Oh, it’s the country in which I live. My country.

GIRL:
What’s the name of your country then?

POET:
It is called “The Land of Modern Minds”.

GIRL:
The Land of Modern Minds? I have never heard of this country.

POET:
When you grow up, you will ear a lot of it. You will live there too.

GIRL:
Never! Never!

POET:
(smiles and says nothing)

GIRL (still weeping):
Oh, that poor lady! Killed for saying the truth; such an exhilarating, new, promising truth too. But… but… but is there a possibility that… that she maybe just had a dream?…

POET (smiling):
The same possibility that, right now, you are also dreaming.

GIRL:
But I am not dreaming!

POET:
You can only assume that until you Awake…

GIRL (after a pause… thoughtfully):
Thank you, Poet, for talking to me.

POET:
Don’t you want to know what happened to the lady after she died?

GIRL?
After? But no. It does not matter, does it?

POET:
But, yes, it does matter. When people die, they start to live…

GIRL:
Is this the truth?

POET:
Yes, dear Lady, it is.

GIRL:
So, are we dead now?

POET:
We are Partly Asleep.

GIRL:
I believe you, Sram. Please, forsake me not…

POET:
That I will Never do!!!

Then they embraced, and did weep
And woke up each
Gently from their deep sleep
On opposite sides of the world.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

MASKING PRIDE

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What’s behind the veil?
Nothing. The veil is your face
I don’t need a mask
My face masks my thoughts

The reason why I don’t hide things
Is because the best hiding places
Are out there in the open
That’s why you don’t see it

You don’t believe the things I tell you
Because I tell them to you
But if I were to hold them back
You would start to look for them in my Silence

And you would look and look
Until you became a prisoner of my Silence
So why don’t you appreciate it
When I just tell you in plain simple words

That I love you?
I killed you when I took off your mask
Now you want to kill me, by putting
A new different one back on.

But I already saw the girl within
Hidden deeper than shame and sin
Struggling with the pain within
And Pride is her middle name.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.