There's someone dead in the toilet

Cherry

By mcmanaman

Sat, 02 Feb 2008
  • 2822 reads
7 comments
 

I know it's Emma's party and I don't want to spoil it
but I think there is somebody dead in the toilet.
I know the handle can sometimes be stiff
but i'm sure in the toilet we're going to find a stiff

I'm not normally one to witter
but I'm sure there is somebody dead in the shitter
it could just be two people snogging
but I think we should kick the door to the bog in.

I'm not trying to be funny
I think here is somebody dead in the dunny.
If we can get in there we'll see
there is someone dead in the WC.

Instead of using the urinal
we're going to have to organise a funeral.
I know this is a bit out of the blue
but someone might have died in your loo.

And it took us a while to kick down the door
and I don't want to talk about it any more
because everybody stood there and laughed
when we saw Emma's dad having a bath.

Certificate 12
Poem
Spunky doggerel
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by _jacobea_ on
The rhyming's pretty clever, and the subject itself is pretty original :) It sounds like a typical teenager's party-get drunk and start imagining things!

Submitted by span on
Hello Mc, I am afraid I am not a fan. Tim thinks this makes me an aetheist. I do not like the rhymes. I imagine you could deliver it funnily but, no. But I am a fan of you. Hannah x

Submitted by blackjack-davey on
The subject matter is interesting but this poem doesn't rhyme or scan. It's a 'one horse joke' quickly exhausting the different words for toilet. Things are dictated by rhyme, not meaning, and it's not funny.

 

Submitted by lukewright on
"I'll tell you once and I'll tell you firmly I don't ever wanna go to Burnley What they do there don't concern me I don't even wanan make the journey." John Cooper Clarke Who says "things" have to be dictated by meaning. No everything has to have "meaning." I like bits of this. I like the different names for WC being exhausted, but this: And it took us a while to kick down the door and I don't want to talk about it any more because everybody stood there and laughed when we saw Emma's dad having a bath. is weak and spoils it for me. I think it needs a different ending, but it's certainly worth pursuing.

Submitted by drew_gummerson on
I liked it and it made me laugh and that seems enough. I did actually laugh at rhyming urinal with funeral. Probably says a lot about my sense of humour. Many significant scenes in my books take place in toilets. Willy Russell is currently restaging a play he wrote in the 70s set in a toilet. Stags and Hens.

 

Submitted by blackjack-davey on
In response to Luke Wright, things don't have to be dictated by meaning but if you think literature is about non-communication, meaninglessness, you'd do better to work in local government. What's essential is something lives on in the reader's mind. Look at the John Cooper Clarke quote: excellent, understated, fluid rhymes that encapsulates the ghastliness of Burnley. Does the toilet poem even come close to Cooper Clarke's wit and his voice of authority? What one feels is that this sort of poetry is completely performance-based. It relies on a soft, non-heckling, drunk, student audience and does not work on the printed page.

 

Submitted by mcmanaman on
Sorry you feel that way blackjack davey. next time i write a poem called 'There's someone dead in the toilet' I'll write it in Dactylic tetrameter. x