Sometimes Irony and Murphy’s Law
lend to each other.

The blind man leads the deaf man,
they debate honest politics
one can’t see, the other can’t hear,
while they are nicely seated
at the corners of the round table,
which has no corners but still divides.
The preacher damns the sinners
between paid confessions and rented beds,
his sermon reeks of whiskey and perfume.
He calls it redemption; she calls it a Tuesday.

The poet bleeds words,
the painter stains canvas,
the ***** does both, but she’s still a *****.
If she starved, she’d be a muse.
If she overdosed, she’d be a legend.
But she lived,
just another body in the gallery of wasted virtue.

The doctor dies in the waiting room.
The fire truck burns before reaching the fire.
The cop gets robbed at gunpoint.
The beggar wins the lottery,
gets hit by a bus cashing the check.
A man buys a gun for protection,
the burglar uses it against him.
The city floods after a decade-long drought,
the farmer's crops drown before the harvest.

We wage war in search of peace.
We bomb cities to set them free.
The soldier fights for his country,
dies nameless in foreign soil.
The treaty is signed,
and the killing begins again.

You save your whole life to retire,
then die before the check clears.
You pray for strength,
but your bones grow brittle.
You wait for love,
but when it comes, your hands forget how to hold.
You ask for honesty,
and they call you cruel,
when the only truth you find
is in between all the stale, day-old lies.

And when the show ends,
they’ll bury you in a suit you never chose,
in a box you paid for but never wanted,
under dirt you’ll never see
and they’ll say you’re at peace.

Isn’t that ironic?