Despite Everything

by John Grey / July 19th, 2020

A bureaucrat can still sit
at his desk,
ruffle papers,
look out the window,
take his coffee with cream
and two sugars.

He can even take
a walk in the park
at lunchtime,
relax on a bench,
feed pigeons.

Everything is numbers.
This many dead of that.
A figure for collateral damage.
A total for body bags.
Convert the adults
into algorithms.
Round the children
up or down
to the nearest thousand.

Everything is numbers…
and that includes everybody.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and Dissident Voice. Latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Cantos. Read other articles by John.

This article was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2020 at 8:02am and is filed under Poetry.