𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐈𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐧

Once upon a time
I was a man of means
My formative years I lived
With beloved
High Priestess
𝘈𝘶𝘮𝘢
Mother of my mother
Sowing seeds of 𝘒𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘢
Land of milk and honey
In my head

She used to say that
If I do good
God will bless me
With 𝘒𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘢’s abundance
Here on earth
If I can handle it
Heaven is for the dead
𝘒𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘢 is the gift of immortality

She waited until
I was a man of substance
In my world
Before she transitioned
To heavenly domains
I emerged from my sorrow
To find 𝘒𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘢 opulence
Doors wide open
Auma must have had
A talk with God

I did good and good some more
With my thoughts
My hands
God poured her blessings on me
Shined my soul
Gave me the Midas touch

Everything I caressed
Felt the touch of God
Gave me gold
It wasn’t by chance that
I was born in
𝘔𝘻𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘪
The land of gold
Diamonds and pearls
𝘍𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘰

In the land of
Black gold
Swimming with the salmon
Powered by the cod
I counted my money
In units of forty
Forty-this
Forty-that
Forty thousand here
Forty thousand there

I invested in
Forty thousand acres land here
Forty thousand houses there
I’d have
Forty thousand million dollars
In my name
By age forty plus forty years

Me
Moving too fast to see
Me
Coming on too strong to care
Forty thousand bolts
Of malignant forces
Hit me
Took me down
Burned my forty thousand
Real estate units
Stole my forty thousand million dollars dreams
Threw me into the fire

Like a whale out of water
Crushing under its own weight
Malignant forces collapsed
Under the weight of
My forty thousand million dollars dreams

They can’t walk
They can barely crawl
The sun never sees them
They can hardly breathe
Miserable
Natural born envious losers
Forty thousand corona ventilators
Couldn’t help them
My forty thousand million dollars dreams are gone

The fire died
Phoenix that I am
Immortality blessings
Recipient that I am
For the good and good some more
That I do
I could only rise again from the ashes
I dream again
No hurry
No worries
This time around

I smell
My forty thousand million dollars anew
𝘒𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘢
Bring on the milk cows now
Do kindly inform
Queen bee that I’m back
Feed me the honey
Babe

Alas
In Ukraine
Forty thousand corpses of
Young men sacrificed in
A war made for
Catastrophe from beginning
To humanity finality
Decay under the spring sun
In open killing fields
Sprawled on devastated city streets
Where even urban stray dogs
Dare not appear

As if artillery smoke
Burning human endeavour spaces
Flowers set on fire
Inadequate
Human body decomposition gases
Foul the atmosphere
Killing cows
Milk is gone
Choking bees nests
No more honey

There never is
Life rising again in these conditions
Burning oil refineries smoke
Strangle the sun
Misery absolute

All dreams
Young men
Boys
Still carrying
Their mothers’ milk odours
On their pre-demise bodies
Forty thousand of them
Are gone
Never to return to
Their 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘬𝘢𝘴
Forty thousand plus forty thousand
Of them
Their mothers
Forty thousand of them
Their sisters
Forty thousand of them
Their cousins
Forty thousand of them
Their fathers
Their brothers
Their uncles
Their buddies
All men dying
On the frontlines too
In
Forties of thousands
Forties of thousands
And
Forties of thousands of them

Meanwhile
In Russia
One man
Presses these and those buttons there
Like a delinquent child
Micro playing computer games
Live
On the biggest outdoor TV screen
Only that death arising in
The Ukraine war
Is that of real life human beings
Forty thousand of whom
Are children of his land
Dying in ways
Sacrificial chess pieces
Never could comprehend
Ghastly

I let my forty thousand million dollars
Dreams go away
No loss
I can always recall them
I ain’t no oligarch
I own no yacht
No green back
No Euro Dollar
Sanctions on my case

Money is only numbers
Numbers come and go
As we come and go
Any woman knows
We die
Numbers continue
With their lives

Numbers make history
Numbers lock history in time
Numbers set history in line
Either you are on it
Or you are not

There are
Forty thousand souls
Wandering in my vicinity
Unaware that they are dead
Knowing not where they are
Where they want to be
Not understanding why nobody
Seems to care about them
Not in the least see them

PTSD on the other side
Must be some dreary journey
Darker than we’ll ever see alive
In pre-nuclear war times
No wonder God is weary
Given up on us
Long time ago

I reach out nevertheless
𝘈𝘶𝘮𝘢 used to say that
Prayer pacifies the dead
I have work to do

I have forty thousand
Demised young men’s dreams
To ensnare
Their forty thousand stories to decode
Before nuclear bombs
Erase even our ability to count zero

Numbers are because we are
I cannot look
Count
And be indifferent

Where is God
When
Forty thousand dead
Young men
Need to be buried
With human dignity
Before scavengers
Devour their identities
Disperse their bones
Across charred earth
𝐄𝐍𝐃
©Simon Chilembo 29/03-2022

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
April 04, 2022