Lists

Robert Ronnow
Ever Maddening Mandala

Lists

One hundred favorite movies, herbaceous
flora, lists of songs to hear in the car,
backfilling the black hole of my soul
(should such a thing exist). A sacred sand
mandala, my lists will evaporate
when I’m no longer here to maintain them.
Buddhists erase theirs voluntarily.
Batting averages, pitchers’ ERAs
for Challenge the Yankees, a board game
I played alone in my room as a kid.

Dust heap of history, Federalist papers,
protagonists, shootists, early morning
bicyclists, sisters among sisters, robot-
assisted specialists, even artists
who after physicists may penetrate
the unknown, taoists, rationalists
who do not depend on a higher power,
Christ or Aristotle, pistil and stamen,
terrorists and rogue nations, scientists
who get out among the ticks and webs.

Distinguished senators, voodooists with
their hocus pocus blessings, humanists
who want everyone pursuing happiness,
naturalists who sometimes pray for man’s
destruction, mischievous, malevolent,
militant thistles, revisionists
who say Nazi atrocities never happened,
biologists looking for FLO, LUCA,
the Juaristas who fought Maximilian,
philanthropists and conservationists.

Poets are considered flashers, nudists.
Journalists, communists, evangelists
and atheists, the children of three mono-
theistic religions, a stern unforgiving
mistress, split lip fever blister nihilists,
idealists who can serve a useful function
notwithstanding moralist illusions.
Form cannot be first if you want to reach
high artistic levels. My saxophonist’s
solos on Epistrophy, Misterioso.

Powerful industrialists, illegal
immigrants, out of network pathologists,
Easter twister, Thanksgiving nor’easter,
wood chippers and persistent phoebes,
optimists, tourists, fat motorcyclists
who start fist fights, youth herpetologists
dispelling myths about snakes and lizards.
Heuristic aids for taking decisions
in dealing with the challenges we’ll face
as a species in millennia to come.

Dad said I’d be good at marketing
since I like making lists, classifying
great guitarists, ISTPs into novelistic
pages, spreadsheets of prospective donors.
Anything can happen if you don’t resist,
hold on long to your lists and your grudges.
When the train comes in the station, whistle
with it. There is a beautiful and almost
mystical irony in all this:
Your soul is immortal, it doesn’t exist.