Reduce To A Number Poem by Mark. A Heathcote

We call, praying 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 about to burst.
Apparently, normal, sleeping, homeless and cold
Better if they brought back slavery, so we're sold.
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.