executive leviathan
you return to the endless to-do list
which seeks to evade you in perpetuity.
it is an ephemeral and unknowable monstrosity.
the closer you come to comprehension,
the farther you drift from completion
of anything at all worthwhile,
and the fog thickens and ensnares you
in aqueous cobwebs as you wade onward, directionless and frantic, with a potent feeling
that all of this is your fault.
the list has never really been a list
but a malignant tumor that grows teeth
and moss and cartilage and tree limbs
of oak and birch and bone.
it is a writhing and infinite mass,
the landscape of your mind.
embedded in these natural components are
manmade ones: weathered monobloc chairs
and fiberglass and broken electronics
that sprout from rotting limbs like fungi
that heals the decay even as it feeds from it.
a symbiosis between unnatural and natural horrors,
if such a distinction can even be made.
veins and arteries weave through it all, rushing
with blood, and somewhere there must be
a heart within that infinity.
the heart is the body's strongest muscle,
and somehow you know this heart wears a shell
of an old car, taken on like a hermit crab does
or perhaps grown around it like a turtle.
its thunderous beat quickens in your skull
with each task you approach, and slows
as you abandon them.
the tasks you seek within the nebulous form are
inextricable from the web of your memory
and your dreams and long abandoned ideas,
all woven through the tendons and telephone cable
and ceramic shards and damp pages of books
written in a language of their own creation
and mucus coated circuitboards growing
within patches of flourishing moss.
each time you wade through the fog
rooting around for something, your thoughts and
analysis pollute it with microplastics and
petroleum and human shit.
the branches curl, recoil in defense,
then spring outward and replicate
whatever hazardous waste they are met with
in defiant ecstasy, mocking your attempted search
and decrying the concept of nature itself
as a maple tree spurts crude oil from its tap.
when you rip a task from the tumor and grasp it,
ready to begin, ideas and memories dribble
from the wound you have created.
you examine them like precious gems,
gently roll them in your hands
wondering how you ever forgot them.
sometimes they are new and incredible ideas:
delicate pearls formed in some ersatz oyster.
you clasp your slippery hands tightly around them,
desperate and hopeful for this new idea
to stick with you and grow as you shape it.
long after you thank the mass for its generosity,
you discover the original task has vanished
and the wound you tore has closed.
muscle stitched up by invisible fingers
with the wire of a string instrument.
or did the metal stitches form there like scabs?
you thank it again for the beautiful pearls
even as you both know it will reclaim them
the next time your fingers slip.
long ago you abandoned the idea of detangling,
combing the branches free from the veins
and all that discordant detritus,
picking out the tasks with a lice comb,
and dropping them cleanly onto lined paper.
a list in neat cursive ink, extracted at last.
that idea went where all your ephemeral ideas go:
back into the leviathan, fuel for its
outrageous and beautiful cancer.