Reduce To A Number Poem by Mark Heathcote

We call, pray to a desert for rain
Yet-not a drop falls to ease our pain
Apparently, normal that hunger-and-thirst
To cut you down like-a-lesion that's burst.
Apparently, normal, sleeping homeless and cold
Better if they brought back slavery; so we're sold.
I guess that's what a birth certificate is.
Reduce to a number, until we fall through their sieve
But not like gold, or anything they would miss
It's just that we've been chosen to enter an abyss.