Howard Firkin
For years we thought we'd just go on and on.
We'd reach the biggest number and add one
and that would be enough to get jobs done,
but this is digitgeddon. They're all gone.
Used up. The numbers racket sprang a leak.
We should have guessed that numbers couldn't last—
we saw it coming but chose to deny it.
Whoever used the last one kept it quiet;
don't know who got it, but they're holding fast
and waiting for the number market peak.

So now, lost mariners, we sit and drift,
and tell unlikely tales, remember whens,
of times we carelessly could count by tens.
We lost it all, all suckered by the grift.