LOVE HURTS

Sometimes, people disappear. This is true. For Love is not always a duet with two feeding off each other. No. Sometimes, the house is standing only because you’re carrying it. I tell you, it’s hard to tell how long this must continue before it becomes abuse. All I know is, there are seasons in everyone’s life when they have enough strength only for themselves. And if you are the one who has to share this season with them, ah, you will not find it easy at all.

But, once, I was a teenager. And slammed the door in my mother’s face. When I opened it, she was there. So I learned, there is that day on which our Love must be unconditional. Not because you massaged my feet, or will bring me home a box of chocolates. I’ve watched it on Discovery channel. How, within minutes of being born, a baby deer is nudged to its feet. But it takes a bit longer for the children of men to learn this lesson, that the World does not revolve around their needs. In the interim, we clean their bums and swaddle them, feed and protect them, knowing they may walk away, one day, in anger or irritation, at the things we become in our old age.

But, once, I was a child. And woke up to the whispered sounds of my father standing by the door, praying for me; gently tiptoeing away when he was done.  And I lay there the rest of the night wondering - how many times does he do this? Not an easy lesson, this one, how Love must always do more than it can ever boast of, or be given credit for. But, some days, they will NEED you, even when they are asleep and do not know it. On days like that you will have to find something more motivating than your natural desire for a standing ovation to reach out. So, let me tell you this.

Look into the eyes of those you love, and read what lies therein. For, I tell you, there are days when those eyes will beg you not to walk away, not to abandon me now in a darkness so deep I cannot talk about it. You will see them grow bleak with tears, but every time you ask, I will stubbornly say, ‘Nothing. I am fine. Leave me the hell alone!’ At this moment, I beg you, listen to your own heart, quieten the static that is always our ego when the love we offer is flung back in our faces. Yes. And if in that still small place where our inner truth resides, you hear a voice – the dependable voice of your unerring intuition – and it says to you, ‘Stay’. Please…stay.

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THIS LOVE...

I have lost count of the number of times my heart has skipped a beat since she was born. It skipped a beat when her mother bled, when she lay in bed all day because in truth there is no cure for a baby that will not stay. 

It skipped a beat when her waters broke, and I leapt out of bed before I was fully awake, for that cry of anticipation – of the woman who got up in the middle of the night to pee and found herself standing in a pool of amniotic fluid – bypasses the brain. 

It skipped a beat each time the midwife came to listen for her’s, when I held my breath unknowing, breathing again only after I’d heard her's.

 It skipped a beat when they pulled her out, when her mother turned to ask me, ‘Where is my baby? Why can I not hear her crying?’ And I was looking at the door, the same one they had rushed through, three mid wives and a silent baby.

 I tell you, these are the origins of Love at its most primeval, that silence between two people that begs God to break it with the delicate wailing of a newborn. That is the only way I can explain it,  this…chasm that opens up within me some times, when she looks up at me. I have tried to find the bottom of these depths. What will I not do for you? What? I have not found the bottom of these depths.

So, I have looked away sometimes because this too will be difficult, explaining to a child why one who has not been spanked, or had his ears pulled, will suddenly sprout tear-filled eyes? For this lesson, of how love is a man’s strength and a man’s weakness, is a difficult one to teach, how the thought of things that have not happened and may never happen – like losing you in a crowded shopping mall, like thinking of you crying and calling my name, or imagining the day when you will have to learn to live without me, like having someone snatch you away through an open window or from an empty sidewalk and having to live with the knowledge that you are out there somewhere, maybe hurt, maybe in pain, and I cannot be there to fulfil the destiny of a father, to throw my life down so yours can spring forth – can wake me up in the middle of the night hyper-ventilating. 

I love you. Do we not say this to each other, playfully, me trying to teach you how to mouth the alphabets of emotion, even though understanding – true understanding – will be many years in the future? But I walk these paths, the same ones my father and mother walked before me, I sit up in the same night, creep down the same hallway to quietly open the door to your room, to look in, to listen, to listen until I hear the reassuring sound of my child breathing; and I worry – the same worry – at the storm brewing outside your window, at the chaos of a society that will not build itself, at these loose bricks crashing down from the ceilings of a crumbling state, threatening to crush my only reason left to hope still. And I determine – feeling the sinews of my soul tense in the most total willingness I know I will ever experience in this life to embrace battle with its consequences, whatever they may be – that you will have a better life…

Yes. I am your father.

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DID YOU MISS NSW6? HERE ARE MORE VIDEOS TO ENJOY!!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Night Of The Spoken Word <nightofthespokenword@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 8:50 AM
Subject: DID YOU MISS NSW6? HERE ARE MORE VIDEOS TO ENJOY!!
To: Night Of The Spoken Word <nightofthespokenword@gmail.com>

NIGHT OF THE SPOKEN WORD 6

So, do you remember that moment when you swore you would never love again? Ha! Life and its sense of irony, because the very next day you saw her - THE ONE. So, my brother, how shall we do this thing? You know? Make her an offer she cannot refuse? You know? Set the perfect trap for the perfect bush rat? You know? Toasting (or chaiking, or blocking, or spinning, or cornering, or whatever it is you want to call it) a woman is always a delicate operation; too much 'bota' and she thinks you mommy's boy, too much kpako and she laments, 'Have I fallen so far in life area boys are now coming?' At NSW6, we walked that tight rope, and we walked it well, all the way from love at first sight to till death do us part. Yes. You will enjoy this! Just click on the link below:

Click on this link to watch TOASTING Watch out for NSW7. Coming...OCT 1ST 2016. You don't want to miss it! You can subscribe to my Youtube channel for more Spoken Word videos@Dike Chukwumerije's Youtube Channel (click) To get notices of up and coming NSW events, you can like our Facebook page @Dike Chukwumerije's NSW (click) Thanks!

THERE IS A TIME TO FART

I know. You only behaved like that because you thought it would be noiseless and odourless. But now people are scampering to the left and right, and someone is even screaming at the top of his voice, "Whoever did this thing eh, e no go better for am!" (He is referring to you). But don't worry. God does not answer useless prayers.

Yes. It is a thing done by all. Beauty Queens and others, house boy and master, drug pusher and the NDLEA staff that nabbed him, no matter, all have stomachs that rumble and, should it linger long enough, will sprout the same sweaty forehead, and twist subtly for freedom, regardless of who nearby would be provoked into unleashing their inner juju priest as a result. You understand?

Because God does. He made the hole after all. He knows these things; that make-up is, well, made up, and no one really wakes up looking like the cover page of Vogue; that picture-perfect is all the stuff that's cleverly hidden, and a human being without an arse-hole has more things to worry about than the one who uses it a bit too often. You understand?

Because, like a rocket, the effort to move forward quickly sometimes causes a loud explosion in the opposite direction, yes? Nothing to worry about, my brother, it is the ying and yang of life, that a woman in labour will push out many unprintable things before the baby's head crowns, and if you wrinkle your nose at the first discharge, and (in the voice of a British butler) say, "Oh, this is all rather nasty, could you keep it in please?" It is true, you will see no more crap, but, well, no baby as well.

Can you imagine? So, let it be known if it needs to be known, that there are days when we must tell the guardians of etiquette and protocol to shut the hell up. No. Not because we have misplaced our Sunday manners, but because we are in the middle of something big and in dire need of all our goddamned energy to get it out. Do you understand?

That it takes a little effort to look presentable - to tie the hair in a neat bun and look away in time to burp - but on some days even this little is a little too much. Yes. For the effort to become everything we can always demands everything we have, don't you know? When we are there, against the walls of our limitations, exerting to the max, pushing against these barriers with all of our strength, that is also when we are most in danger of releasing one?  Yes. Deal with it. You hear me? Deal with it.

For, I tell you, if Life just happens to have woken me this morning on an important errand, and this is the day you also happen to decide that you are going to be standing by the road ticking off who says it correctly - fork, fok or fek - please, do not be angry, if I find a fork and chook you with it. Yes? This is it, my brother. That we must not go around farting just because. But - never ever let one stand in the way of giving Life your absolute best, yes? Use wisely.

#nsw7

Our own Poetry is real

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HAVE YOU SEEN THIS VIDEO FROM NSW6? PILLOW TALK

NIGHT OF THE SPOKEN WORD 6

NSW6 was all about Love. Click on the image below to watch 'PILLOW TALK'. It happens in every relationship, you see, this corner-corner talk about coded things, when lovers whisper to each other across soft pillows. Yes, it happens in every relationship. To watch it captured LIVE at NSW6, click on the link below: click here to watch PILLOW TALK Watch out for NSW7. Coming...OCT 1ST 2016. You don't want to miss it! You can subscribe to my Youtube channel for more Spoken Word videos@Dike Chukwumerije's Youtube Channel (click) To get notices of up and coming NSW events, you can like our Facebook page @Dike Chukwumerije's NSW (click)

Thanks!

Dike Chukwumerije

8 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO YOU

After writing, ‘8 THINGS I HATE ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO YOU’, Babe of Life peeped into my study and said, “Hmm, I saw what you wrote on facebook o.” Ah! I have known her long enough to know what “Hmm, I saw what you wrote on facebook o” really means. So, for sake of life and limb, I meekly re-submit:

#8Yearsandstillcounting: 8 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO YOU

1. That I can be awkward without ridicule and naked without shame. Forgive me. This is the reason for all the times I sporadically break into what I think is makossa. And for the unhealthy amount of time I spend in the same boxers every weekend. Forgive me.

2. That we are slowly evolving beyond the need for unnecessary talk. So, look at me now over any dinner table and I will tell you whether you’re saying: “I take God beg you, stop eating that thing as if you don’t see peppered chicken regularly”; or “I take God beg you, eat and pack take-away, because I am not cooking jack when we get home, you hear?”

3. Have I ever told you? Everything about you smells like perfume, even your morning breath. True. It smells like Chanel. And I love it!

NOT LIKE THIS!

4. Those nights when you are sleeping and I get to sit there watching you, yes, but not like Willy-Willy, don’t worry; just thinking – ‘seriously, how did a nerd like me end up with a top to bottom if you doubt it check the label complete chikito like you?’ You know? I like it. Those nights you wake up, and we get to lie there gisting – like friends, not lovers – in the darkness. In fact, I love it.

5. I feel safe enough to say these things, you know? I am afraid, I don’t know, I feel my life is spinning out of control. You know? You keep my secrets. Better still, you forgive me for having them at all.

6. The way we fight these days, not at all like before, when your mouth was Ogbunigwe, and my expertise was 7 days silence. Sometimes, I still ask myself - what the hell were we smoking? Trying to knock out the teeth of somebody you will wake up next week and try to kiss? What? Biko, I like the way we do it now, like boxers planning to retire without debilitating head injuries.

7. Our children. Sometimes, they smile like you. Sometimes, they frown like you. Sometimes, they sit there absent-mindedly singing, “oyigiyigi o o o’, just because they hear it blaring out of your car stereo every morning on the way to school. You see, I like the way they are beginning to resemble you, down to the same nervous break down at the possible sighting of a cockroach… In fact, I love it.

8. You are the color of our carpet, the paintings on our wall, the two armchairs that sit in a corner, straight out of a John Lewis brochure, but made for a fraction of the price by the local carpenter you found. Undisputed: you are the reason I live in the coziest, coolest, (never mind the buckets we have to put here and there to catch the drip when it rains), most beautiful house I have ever lived in. Undisputed: you are my home.

Happy anniversary.

(Ehm…please, can I come back into the room now? Biko. I will not post anything on facebook again without permission. Biko.)

Images taken from:

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8 THINGS I HATE ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO YOU

1. You are shouting something from somewhere, only God knows what you’re saying. So I look up from my desk and yell, ‘What did you say?” You shout back something, only God knows what you’re saying. So, I grumble to myself, get up, walk to the top of the stairs and yell, “What did you say?” And you shout back something, only God knows what you’re saying. So, I hiss to myself, walk down the stairs, to the door of the living room, and find you curled up on the couch reading. So, I take a deep breath and ask quietly, “What did you say?” And, looking totally surprised to see me there, you peer over your book and say, “Oh, I was just wondering where you were.”

2.  If I ask upstairs, then ask downstairs, then ask before I start peeling it if you want dodo and you say, ‘No, no, no’. Then I peel it and fry it, sit down to eat it, and you sit opposite me – and in the name of ‘keeping me company’ – take one single dodo and put in your mouth. I hate it.

3.  When I am sleeping and you wake me up because I am snoring. Honestly, before God and man, is it fair?

4. You complain and complain that you take care of everybody in this house from morning till night and nobody ever takes care of you. So I get up the next morning and say I will make you breakfast, and you act excited and follow me to the kitchen. Then I open the cupboard and select one pot, and you sigh like someone recently bereaved. So, I ask, ‘What is it?’ And you say, ‘That is my wok. I only use it when I’m making Chinese fried rice’. So I select another one, and you say, ‘Ehm, I don't use that frying pan anymore.’ And I turn around and ask, “Should I let you do this?” And you say, “Perhaps it is best”.

5. You come into the sitting room. I am watching a movie. You ask, “What is that?” I press the “i” button. You read the info and say, “This is a nice movie, why didn’t you call me?” I say, “Sorry”. You sit down. Three seconds later, you ask me, “Who is this man?” I say, “I don’t know. I have not watched the movie before.” Ten seconds later you ask me, “Is he going to kill her?” I say, “I don’t know. I have not watched the movie before.” Six seconds later you scream and ask me, “Will she die?” Honestly, I hate it.

6. You hold up 2 dresses and ask me to pick one. I do a quick ‘tun-bum-tun-bum’ in my head and point to the one in your right hand. “Really?” You look disappointed. “Doesn’t it make me look fat?” So, I point to the one in your left hand. “Really?” You look disappointed. “I think it makes me look short.”

7.  When we are sitting at a table somewhere and a girl with a ‘look at it’ bum walks past and you immediately start looking into my eyes, and keep looking into my eyes till she has passed the point where I can only see the glory by very obviously turning my head… Honestly, before God and man, is this fair?

8.  Now, you are frowning. So, I ask, “Is everything ok?” You say, “Yes.” And I go back to writing this article. Please, how is this ‘insensitive’?

Image taken from:

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