THE TOILET
If a dream has meaning,
Gathering the nuts and bolts of metaphor from the actions of a day
To fix together some kind of message
Or desperate warning against the direction taken
Delivered while asleep before morning,
Then how shall I explain the toilet?
I am scouring emails and folders and notebooks
For names and addresses deleted
By a mirror drive backup computer meltdown and cloud failure
That erased you all from my database to leave a clean and shiny blank space.
I am searching for evidence of your existence - and when it met mine,
Usually in some dining room or other, when you asked for invitations
And I made a note of that moment in time.
Now my art show is imminent.
At night in my sleep I renovate a London house, the guest toilet of which
Is outside, up the road, on a street corner,
Protruding from the pavement like a post box
For human excrement. Before I wake
I check beneath the lid and see it is used by strangers in the night,
Under cover of darkness, keeping it tidy.
