Comfort Break

A Toilet by any other Name

We called it the dunny

much to our mother’s disgust,

to whom 'toilet' was too base a term,

reminiscent of effort, labour, discomfort.

We snorted at, ‘A Lady at her Toilette’,

Mum shook her head and sighed,

‘go to the lavatory’

cold, clinical - if only it was.

The dark warmth of the dunny,

spider ridden,

a whiff of the devil,

as his scabby scaly tail

scrapes out of sight.

But he’s there,

Watching, waiting.

***

Talking to God on the Porcelain Telephone

It's the only place but home I feel relaxed enough to crap. I know it sounds crude, but there's
somethin' in that – Jamie T.

It’s probably one of the most enduring relationships we have in our lives. Elvis died on his. Taking his ease with his drugs and his dreams.

We can be judged by others for its cleanliness – a dapper crapper is what we aim for.

As children, we’re toilet trained like lawless puppies or kittens. Little boys learning the most important of life lessons – to always laugh at farting.

Like death, it’s a great leveler. A gatherer of us together in common pursuit, to do something we still don’t talk about in polite company.

Is time on the toilet the closest we get to meditation in our modern life? Some real me-time, alone with yourself, sitting there and contemplating that one day you’re going to die. Or instead
shutting out the incontrovertible fact of your mortality with the chatter of the magazine, the book, the ipad you took in to the bathroom.

When we can’t go, it becomes the one thing we really need at the expense of everything else – crossing our legs, stopping philosophy and debate, rational thought and desire. It makes us animal
again; beneath the layers of artifice and sophistication a beast only, sniffing its scat in the cold damp of morning.

What did Mr. Spock find in the toilet? The Captain's log. Boom boom. Scatological humour? Always kind of shit really.

The toilet mouth gapes wide, swallowing our waste, all the things we don’t want any more and some of the things we do. Eating faeces, urine, vomit, menstrual blood, miscarriages, hopes and plans. All the things we are and were. All down the same way.

If God existed and he had a toilet, what would he flush down it? The shitty things, the war, the disease, the hate. Would he feel relieved afterwards as he left the room without washing his hands or putting the lid down?

Draining the anaconda, shaking the snake. Taking a dump, releasing the hounds.

Sitting on his big, white throne. God on the toilet.

 

Of Gods and Bogs

It’s dark in here,

the bulb’s blown,

you can’t read.

God won’t see you behind the locked door

so

think anything you like -

all those thoughts you never knew were there.

Close your lids

and

luminescence drifts past your sightless eyes,

weightless, shapeless, portentous.

You are God of your own universe,

watch new galaxies unfurl.

 

Domestic Detail in the House of Dreams

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