Leave Us Alone, Fragile Life Poem by John Sensele

Life fragile
Throbbing within brittle bodies
At the same time fertile and sterile
Swimming in ebbing eddies

At the most unexpected moment
Fragility strikes a lung
Next inflicts on legs fragments of torment
So badly strung

A woe-struck woman weeps and weeps
Groaning and posing questions
Why pain, pesky pain, prodding pain sweeps
Through organ, tissue and cell sections

Incapacitating, disabling, debilitating
Rendering vitality weak
Smashing, slashing, soaking, stealing
Signs of stamina and succor quick

Sometimes in intensive care
Where souls land without a brand
Wondering why this acidic affair
Occurs which lives can't understand

When into their modest routines pain comes along
Inflicting, inviting, inciting misery
On the weak and the strong whose song strikes a gory gong
With or without a celery

Lives concluding
Whether the breath of life
Squanders time conjecturing
Which glad or sad song to play on the fife

‘Tis unfair, I hold
For life tricks to play
Joy, justice and jingle to withhold
As streams of pains waylay

While with bated breath relatives in wait fret
Wonder what the point is
For life to pose a threat
Through incapacity, debility, illness and disease.