He saw no use for mess.
Mess gave him stress.
His workspace was
An inside-out briefcase,
An empty place, devoid
Of paper accumulations
And carelessly flicked
Nasal evacuations.
All Monday to Friday he
Primed and polished,
Only pausing to admonish
Miscreant colleagues, astonished
At his passion for sheen
And urgent need to clean
And be clean.
"Why won't you tidy?" he whined,
As they glimpsed suspiciously
At the office-cleaning-maniac,
Hovering above his worktop
With a mini-desk-o-vac.
Derek never wondered,
Whether the others
Were wise to be wary
Of desktop planning; he
Did not see the pitfalls
In his unconsidered love
For spick and spanning.
And so he was damned.
For when nuclear war began
His untidy colleagues gazed
Joyfully at the deadly radiation
Reflected harmlessly from
The whiteness of their
Litter strewn workstations.
Poor Derek fried.
And died;
And, to his surprise,
Was sent to hell because
God's desk is messy.
© Alex Frankel 2002
