Fancy Rat
March 11 2014

The to-do list
is never done.
The way a rodent's tooth
grows and grows,
a curved dagger
that will splinter my palate's eggshell bone
bore through the base of my skull
skewer my brain.

Aimed at me
my whole life long.
So I constantly gnaw,
tread-milling madly
barely keeping up.
My list, tacked to the fridge,
like a fancy rat
bred for human companionship.

Just imagine the done list,
an immense scroll
from the age of giant animals,
filling the kitchen
unravelling over the floor.

A record of banality
that covers my life,
every appointment, grocery, chore.
The daily grind, the growing back,
like a frazzled rat
hanging on
by the skin of his teeth.

Free-wheeling madly,
going nowhere
fast.


Unlike my writerly persona here, I've succeeded in simplifying my actual life down to the bare minimum. So you'd think I'd occasionally have the rare privilege of a blank-slate day. But no, a niggling to-do list always seems to accompany me, unceremoniously stuffed into my back-pack. I can get close, ready to strike-off the final item, when something inevitably comes up; and before I know it, the page is once again full. (And yes, it's pen on paper. After all, you can't ball up a smart phone or iPad and throw it against the wall!)

If, on one's deathbed, one could somehow re-assemble all these lists, is this all a life would amount to? I suppose this thought is very much in the spirit of two other recent poems -- Killing Time and At My Most Negative ... -- which, in a similar philosophical spirit of "don't sweat the small stuff", also counsel perspective, distance, detachment.

That tooth aimed at my brain was a really helpful metaphor for this life-long race of minutia, of barely keeping up. And once I was onto that rodent/rat idea, it was a fun challenge to work the metaphor for the rest of the poem; without either torturing it to death, or leaving it feeling unfinished, a tired balloon phffffting out stale air. I'm pleased with the balance here.

I think I even got away with the admittedly lame "treadmill" metaphor. If my main point of comparison is a caged rodent, after all, it's pretty hard not to get a treadmill in there somewhere! I may have taken a greater risk with "hanging on/ by the skin of his teeth". I know clichés are inexcusable. But sometimes, I let myself: usually using them ironically; and sometimes using them to give the poem a more colloquial voice. Here, it's just that it fit too perfectly to resist: the mix of the literal and metaphorical; the feeling of desperation.

My favourite part is right off the bat, in the first stanza. I really like the violence of the verbs "splinter", "bore", "skewer". (Although I must say that managing the sideways rhyme of "animals", "unravelling", and "banality" (and maybe you could throw "companionship" rhyming with "imagine the done list" in there too) isn't bad either!!)