Progress Is My Most Important Product
The Internet advances as I write.
I’m adding digits to the total here.
What? Is disorder spoiling for a fight?
The Internet advances as I write—
And entropy does not blot out the light
For now. Hey, if I’m crazy, I’m sincere!
The Internet advances as I write.
I’m adding digits to the total here.
–Tom Riley
Connecting with the Infinite
Is it entropy
that I am now feeling
in my bones?
–Tom Riley
Death’s Direction
What gnaws at
your flesh gnaws at more
than your flesh.
–Tom Riley
Lucky Winner
(for Bailey Sciambra)
Fondly I call to mind that fateful day.
Whom unto Mrs. Williams would I send?
You volunteered then in your helpful way–
but so did someone else, some other friend
of noble service. Through my mind I wend
in an attempt to draw that other name
out of my memory. Oh, I intend
to dig it out! But I fail in my aim.
Entropy is impossible to tame,
and chaos in the end kicks all our asses.
My brain, once swift and sharp, is growing lame.
Who was that kid, amongst those lads and lasses?
Sadly I say I do not have a clue.
To everyone’s surprise, oh, I picked you!
Happy birthday!
T.R.
6 February 2015
California Cold
I got a taste of California Cold—
I, long an exile from the land of snow.
Some exiles may have cried out: No, no, no!
I rejoiced as the ice reached to enfold
My aging blood. Why, if the truth is told,
I’ve missed the temperatures I used to know!
Just as the darkness sets my heart aglow,
So the cold warmed what in my heart is old.
Down from my fountain, icicles hung clear
And glorious. This crazy Disneyland
Was real again! Ah, entropy was here
Where very few can hope to understand
The emptiness that undoes all our fear!
My joy was keen because it came unplanned.
–Tom Riley
Entropy Rules
(for Ben Riley)
Entropy rules that things break everywhere—
And that’s what makes a lot of work for Ben.
Do mechanisms seem lost past repair?
He’s fixed them – and he’ll fix them once again.
He cannot chat with every denizen
Of nature’s unreliable machine
About what works and doesn’t work – but, when
He’s needed, he will make the sudden scene
And quietly, with swift skill, intervene
Until the trend toward breakage is reversed.
He fixes – though he doesn’t always clean
Afterward up. And we are most accursed
In that he cannot fix the brains of fools.
That is why entropy, at long last, rules.
–Tom Riley
Flammeus Gladius 