Sunday, January 4, 2015

Tim Laffey- Two Poems


Difficult Things

There are difficult things
and there are easy things.
There are graceful
and clumsy hands. There
is the hardware for
the software purring in
us. There are planets slung out
from distant systems
into the empty heavens.
There are robust life forms
crowding black smokers
boiling up from hidden
ocean floors. There’s
a lizard brain wrapped
in our warm mantle of
cortical folds. There are
regrets cut short by cold
indifference. Both the good
and the bad among us
may opt equally for
awful outcomes. There
are those who dance,
those who don’t. Some
are held in the loving arms
of others. More are not.
Have we no choice?
There are ends prefigured
by their beginnings, yet
there are outcomes
we can change. No less
than this remains:
Until we put aside desire
for an instigating being
who intercedes in our affairs,
and reconcile that
the formulae of physics
act here alone, we are
inconsequential creatures
lacking form.
We are orphans of the void
and we are sorrows
in the stones.



Just A Quick Note

Sorry to report that
despite the best efforts
of medical science, I continue to decline
and have no better diagnosis
to share with you. Truth told,
since last we spoke
I have developed
an extreme instance of
                        diarrhea and can hold
nothing in. Rather it all
runs through me, undigested,
and immediately back out,
like all the important things in life
I’ve neglected to cherish
and hold tightly to
while pursuing lesser goals.
I can no longer take nourishment
from what I eat
and may, in fact,
be slowly starving,
a modern Midas munching
golden fries.

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