The Death of Derek the Desk Tidier
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Derek liked a tidy desk. 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.
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Poem Study Notes:I think most people lost patience trying to make any sense of this one, probably as the themes are all a bit mixed up (it's a kind of cautionary tale, warning against spending too much time thinking about trivialities, but with a splash of surrealism and just general silliness). However, the poet recalls that his boss at the time enjoyed the concept of the mini-desk-o-vac. A few years after writing this poem, as if by magic, the poet met a man in the office, who looked exactly like Derek in the picture (although he wasn't wearing a hard-hat) and talked about the need to have tidy desks in exactly the same way. Is it possible that in this case life imitated art? Did that man even exist before this poem was written?
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