SOD'S LAW

Are things ever pre-ordained?
After all,
Who writes the script for all this misery -
The spannered works, the thwarted plans,
The big day when it rained?
Is there a furtive culprit cutting up life's fabric
Just to suit his whim with spiteful hands?
However hard you try to navigate
If something can go wrong it will go wrong -
Then does go wrong, to so infuriate
In a flourish of ruined hopes and disappointed dreams.
Snags and obstacles, nasty surprises,
They spring unbidden out of nowhere
Like flies sky-diving into ointment jars
To tip us and derail us from the hurtling trains of Time;
Inanimate things ........... with minds of their own, it seems.

Uncalled for inconveniences;
Alternative outcomes of frustration;
The one-in-a-million stroke of bad luck -
"Why me?" - Because it's not someone else!
Unanticipated setbacks, even tragedies -
All calculated by this Master of his art. Not God,
This scriptwriter lurking in the wings
Of probability, but a vague and devious
'Entity" we call Sod ...........
Complete with his programme-wrecking gremlin army
Furiously scribbling laws, decrees, orders
That, without a doubt
He is bound, in this Continuum
To see are carried out.