The statistical tsunami of medical numbers
floods the mental sanctuary
and razes the grid of implication, 
runs riot over common order
like drug thugs on the border
who know no boundary
except what a gun will provide.

Data piles up like so much junk.
Facts float and sink,
a spinning miasma on the tide
ebbing into an ocean of ignorance,
unruly, worthless, leveled.

The riverbanks of understanding
do not withstand the onslaught
any more than a border withstands
white-collar criminals and contrabandistas.
We live in terror of the percentile,
the weight of the smallest digit
to the right of a meaningful period,
the next mean deviation
invading our home, know the waves
that lap at the doorsteps
of consciousness erode semblance
and serve as purveyors of terror,
digitized to significance.

We cannot make sense of percents,
of distribution curves of horror,
so succumb to chum with the nickel bag dealer
of hope who gives us better than even odds
to escape the block that we cannot leave.