The Maker of Lists

So this morning you woke with a list in your head,
a list that seemed to shift and grow every time
you thought of it, a list too long for you to sort it,
and everywhere you turned the world added to it
and for a man so simple, it became too much,
not because it was too much but because
your head simply could not hold it.

That is something you have come to notice
since the time in life so long ago
when your emotions were overwhelmed
by a barbaric hoard of change and abandonment
and disgust and hate and you were left wounded
on the field. It is a kind of emotional PTSD I suppose,
an inability to hold but so much and function,

But that is the reason we have paper. To write it all down,
move it from head and heart to a mere piece of foolscap,
where suddenly it does not look so large,
a few inches of script. The barbarians reduced
to a mere set of scribbles. and you can take them out,
one by one, like a cosmic whack-a-mole,
laughing like a child, the child perhaps, I am,
in both the good and the weak senses of the word.

About this poem

For a man who loves simplicity, I always seem to have too much going on. Fortunately, like my mother before me, I have become a list maker. It may or may not make me more productive, but it keeps me sane.

The sign in the picture is mine.

Tom