So Many

the funeral pyres are burning again
and the rivers are drowning in ashes

we count human deaths in tweets and updates 
manipulating lives into numbers

they can be multiplied and divided,
slivered between the folds of consciousness

they become shards of glass that by design
eventually scarify and dull

tsunamis, earthquakes,
disease and famine, 
war and sinking ships,
they all become bearers of rounded numbers,
accumulators of scores, excelling
in the scramble to enter the Guinness
Book of Records, for curious and ghastly
Deaths

the tragedy of the grotesque million,
is always made smaller,
by the solitary one.


© niall oconnor 2015