Census of the Living and the Dead

The sum total

of all human existence

is 108.2 billion:

100.8 billion dead.

–

Subtract existence

from death

and we are the small living,

sometimes believing rest.

–

War dead from

150 million to 1 billion:

in active conflicts

that kill over 1,000.

–

Subtract the casualties

from existence

and those are

the grateful and ungrateful.

–

Subtract the holocaust dead

and what is left

is the unimaginable grief

and regret of all the survivors.

–

Subtract existence from casualties

and the remainder is weeping

mothers, fathers, daughters, sons,

wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, friends.

–

The epidemic number is greater

than all war and almost equal

to existence itself:

107.6 billion disease ridden souls.

–

Subtract existence from war/pestilence

and the remainder is the

healthy and the lucky to be alive,

the hobbled rest of humanity.

–

Natural calamity cause less than 5%

of all known deaths,

crime and murder even less,

the rest die in peace.

–

The census of mankind

leaves no one untouched,

by human wrath

or nature’s devastation.

–

Subtract existence from man

and man from the hellishness

of the natural order and the

remainder can only be God.