Home » Poems » Eric Ashford » Still Counting

Still Counting

And when it ends suddenly, unexpectedly,
You start to count.
First on the days, then the hours - then
Just counting until 100
Then
Beginning            again.

The dead find their faces
The living count faces
                Then most forget
Unless the face has your DNA in it,

But you remember the body bags
Being moved around in the night,
The nurses crying,
The lies being spread,
              The excuses,
The obfuscation,
The blundering incompetence
Of bureaucracy and officialdom.
The elderly kept in deathcamps
that used to be nursing homes.
The grinning mayors
                          And governors.

It’s going away now.
Less and less each day.
It’s going away now
It’s going to a place
Where the living cannot find it
                  It’s going away now.

And suddenly you are very angry
About the stupid shut-ins and the shut-downs,
The politicization of tragedy.
The muddled and slanted statistics
The ridiculous projections,
The false data.
The contradictions and bluster.
The draconian regulatory and government
Sponsored power grabs.
The gagging and intimidation
Of workers.
The trashing of basic freedoms
People
Jailed,
Fined,
Harassed.
The banning's.
The right to collectively worship denied,
Peaceful protest denied.
Businesses forced into bankruptcy.
The unemployment
      The waste.
And destruction.
The sundering of families,
The needless school closures,
The suffering that led
To clinical depression and drug overdoses,
The disdain of those
Who rejected commonsense remedies.
The manipulations
              And machinations,
All the willing useful fools
Chorusing together to tread down
Democracy.
The grinning talking heads
      Who doctored the news.
The attacks and the cancelling
Of those who begged to differ.
Dissenters labeled conspiracy theorists.
The cover-ups:
Gain of function.
GAIN OF FUNCTION.

The dumb mantra of the ignorant
Demanding we 'follow the science'
But the science was wrong
The scientists lied
They lied.
  They all knew
                  AND THEY LIED!

And I am still counting
In case it returns
And I have a lot more things to count,
Lots more to tally and be made
ACCOUNTABLE.

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