NovPoWriMo 4

Finding it hard to believe 
the poem I wrote a year ago 
about waiting for votes to be counted 
would count for so little 
a little more than a year later 
but then it wasn’t just about 
counting votes as yet uncounted 
but counting all the souls lost 
to a novel coronavirus 
we had only just gotten around to 
wearing masks to prevent 
and the number back then was 
an order of magnitude less than 
it is now as announced blithely 
on the National Public Radio 
as 750,000 a number which by now 
they don’t even bother comparing to 
like the number of casualties 
in all the wars the so called United 
States participated in combined 
almost as if we have forgotten 
how to count in the mean time 
how to save tax dollars by offering 
fewer social services no one 
got accustomed to taking for granted 
so therefore they won’t know what
they’re missing so they’ll vote for 
the opposite party just to shake things up
just to send a message to the obstructionists 
they are on their side all you have to do
is count the years you’ve been alive 
and divide them by election years
even off election years no need to be on
and you’ll see the end game in sight 
since you were born nothing has trickled 
down no one’s counting those numbers 
no one can even visualize a trillion 
just a lot of numbers we might remember 
if in your distracted sleep deprived state 
you remember to google another string
of adjectives in search of a noun
another year down unannounced 
who knows what number counts next