Charles Lipanda Matenga, a young poet and writer, who was born in DR Congo, raised orphan and spent life in a refugee camp, shares his poetry

Charles Lipanda Matenga, was born and raised orphan at Rwenena Village, Uvira, Sud-Kivu, DR Congo in 2005. Charles Lipanda Mahigwe is President of African Youth Artistic Poetry-AYAP. 

LIFE HAS GOT THORNS 

I’ve been running, running and running away from the thorns of life

Since I was three

Hoping that these thorns will dry and fall

But the more I grow, the more they become fleshy

They are piercing into my skin and eating up my remaining blood cells

Leaving me like trees in Sahara desert

I’m a building with no foundation

That can melt down like waxy in fire

I’m a tree with no roots but only structures held onto the sand

Which can be easily eroded by zephyr and showers

I’m the infertile soil from which nothing grows

I’m the smoke swirling separately

But I can’t be caught

Shall this life lose her thorns?

For it wasn’t my wish to drink this cup of bitterness

I also needed care from my roots

Feeding me from my childhood

Was I born to live in orphan-hood?

Where education is the pearl

It cost me legs and hands for my breath couldn’t endure me in deep waters

Where clothes are like gold to find

Sleeping on the ground without even covering blankets

Has become my routine

Why chopping our stems down with your western pang knives

Spreading yourselves as many as weeds in our fields

We’re tired of these bloodsheds floating as runoff flowing on the valleys

What kind of greedy are you?

Exploiting our lands

And leaving us orphans and our mothers widowers

Life has got thorns

That hurt our hearts

Making our souls mourn

With every tide of the Lake Tanganyika

Under “you write what you live”

This is the voice of the African children

***

DOLDRUMS

On a day of love and sorrow

I am still and quiet

Like a silent sea

I am loved and left

In a silent night

I dream of you

My eyes see unseen view

Of our wonderland

Butterflies on blue berries

Hoping at attaching

Black birds flying freely

In our imaginary empire

I am lying beside you

Trying to pat your soften body

On a steep surface of land

Yet I only find myself holding

And smashing silt and sand

I imagine being with you here

We would play and dive in this sea

Following these ocean currents

As they cause waves of water

Flowing silently as profound deaf

But you have left me in a condition

Of eutrophication

Unable to breath due to suffocation

I am dying alive

For no way to survive

You didn’t come to stay

But to leave

You taught me to love

Yet you were chemistry

Knowledge of applications

Of love and pain

Whose solution is stress!

I spread my wings

And fly there high

In the Doldrums

Where air is dry

Where life is cool without you

And not tougher with you

There, I’ll be reborn

And learn not to make any one torn

Though her face seems to be worn

I’ll love her forever and never allow

Myself to be gone

I’ll bear with her

In both bad and good moments

Till we rise our own flag of love

On this precious state

And make it stiffer than

Romeo and Juliette

I’ll build hope on her

For our love to shine brighter

Than stars and moon

***

STOICHIOMETRY

I am a scientist

Conserving the law of matter

I can crunch moles

When given poem’s mass

How many particles make one poem?

Or shall I conduct an experiment

To investigate what causes ideas

To escape into the atmosphere?

Jot down the first line that stings you

Or wait for a variable to be controlled

It is not magic that produces people poets

Vision is a catalyst

That speeds up the photosynthesis

Of cluttered words through photolysis

Into palpable piece.

Ambition is a library whose art

Paints meaning of success

Using serrated words

Splashing and spluttering in a river of books

Like virgin papers rustling in hands.

Mission is a set goal

That’s compiled of the ticking of watch

Never leave a poem to be finished later

Or else you will cringe from it

As your face crinkling in disgust.

Poetic solution sizzling in laboratory

Applying chemistry

Can manufacture poetry

Under stoichiometry

Also read: Home is everywhere – Charles Lipanda Matenga

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Prepared by Angela Kosta Academic writer, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, translator, journalist

The post LIFE HAS GOT THORNS – POETRY FROM DR CONGO first appeared on Sindh Courier.