Mulumba Ivan Matthias is a Ugandan author living in Kampala, Uganda. He is a valuation surveyor by profession. His first collection of poetry, Poetry In Motion, was published in 2012. His poetry and short fiction have been published in The Kalahari Review, Readers’ Café Africa, and Africa Book Club. His story “Into the Bush” won the December 2013 Africa Book Club short reads competition. He writes a blog http://mimulumba.wordpress.com/. He is currently working on his first novel.

 

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Shamim

A short pink dress
shyly falls on her body
anxious to fly away
each time the wind blows.

A false smile
briefly plays on her lips
anxious to hide away
beneath the pain.

A wailing baby on her back,
she hastily strides
through the scorn
of the men
who would have stayed
had she said yes!

 

A memory

Once our love outshined the stars
our groans baffled the eyes of darkness.
We swore to outlive eternity,
fill this world with countless offspring.

But now you are gone to another’s embrace.
You treat me as though you never knew me.
I am, but a memory slipping away
never to return!

 

Breathe  

Breathe into my nostrils
the memory of a smile.
Breathe into me
the seed of hope.
Breathe,
so I can live again.

The love of my life

So smooth
so tender
is her skin.

So graceful
so humble
is my queen.

So adorable
so charming
is the love of my life.

 

Rumblings of a tree

A man who habits a lakeside in a rural village
where each morning he wakes to nature’s songs,
is but a pauper
for the lack of television,
his inability to speak in foreign tongues,
and not have been schooled
in the formal system.
But he governs nature
and from it harvests what to nourish his wants with
unlike those that think they’re wiser.
Yet they beg
to make themselves more fulfilled!

Mockery befalls a hardworking man
and praise, a thief who strikes gold!
Time, that which rewards patience with skill and experience,
is an enemy now,
side-lined to create an allure of wealth and success.
The traditions with which we were once defined,
are now garments for those left behind by the wheels of progress.
We mock the hard workers, the unschooled,
left to bask in the oblivious existence of village life,
to dream and look up to thieves.

We break the foundations laid by our fore fathers,
with no second thought whatsoever
how those who  will come after us will survive.

Carpentry, fishing, hunting, farming, smelting…
these foundations of industrialisation
that ought to have been translated into industry,
were stifled by the slavery of the mind!
Now we’re but slaves to television.
We’re slowly decaying.
Our mother tongues, customs, values…
all surrendered.
We’ve succumbed
to the might of money!
yet we created it!