Prolegomena to His Obitchery
3. You
In the beginning was the word, John said God said
and then there were so many. Numbers came much later
allowing us to know that God exists[1]
make bombs and count time and the dead
eg 20 million since 1945
by US wars, and every number has a name.[2]
Seems I’m a throwback to basic numerosity
since more than one is you and less than you
is nothing. So when you said, in that matter-of-fact way
you have that one day you would leave me too
it sent me way back, careening past all meaning.
Behold the Pleistocene. I need to shave.
[1] David Ray Griffin, God Exists But Gawd Does Not, Process Century Press, 2016.
[2] James A. Lucas, “The U.S. Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 ‘Victim Nations’ Since World War II,” Global Research, Nov. 15, 2015. A conservative estimate, excluding multiple ongoing conflicts (Ukraine, Gaza). Given US military and economic power there is hardly a conflict in which US “involvement” did not play a major role. 20 million is not exaggerated when predictable consequences of war – famine, disease, displacement, and social collapse – are included, as routinely in public health analysis, not to mention the lethal effects of poverty imposed by sanctions (economic warfare).