Automatic Flushing Toilets


I bid my time.
Wave after wave comes crackling
invisibly towards me.
Patiently I wait
until the ruins glow with life,
first one...
two...
three... almost there...
waving frantically, I catch them;
four!
Four bars! My weapon glows
with life and power
as it downloads the newest articles to read.
Ready, my quest begins.

Walking the eternal hallways
lined by the sirens and succubi
of privatized corporate hell;
brandishing my smile like a sword,
slicing through the managers and minutia
that pulls at me from all sides.

The journey is long, but
the first part of my quest is over.
I enter the realm of the dragon.
The sounds of running water surrounding me
in the alabaster chambers; I enter
while the beast slumbers.

Finding its den, I approach, gently,
to place the veil over its unblinking
single red eye.
If it awakes, all is lost.
I settle down, my victory assured, the beast blinded,
and begin to read.

Minutes, hours, days could be passing
in this magical land where time has no meaning.
Obsessed; enthralled; I must summon
every ounce of my strength
my courage,
to pull myself away.

But as I stand, the veil rustles, and the dragon wakes.

I roar emerges just as I leap to my feet to avoid the
plague like droplets that explode from its mouth.
As one lands upon me, burning the skin it touches,
I am thrown back, and in my blunder,
the weapon slips from my grasp.

Legs bound together by a spell I stumble
in pain and confusion reaching as I see the
weapon falling in slow motion towards
the dreadful mouth of the beast.

The monster lets out a final roar of victory
as the weapon slips into the evil blackness
of plague, and death, and disease
that are its twisted mouth and bowels.

I stumble, falling over myself,
bound by the spell I spill out of the beasts den;
all hope lost, the creature is victorious.
Exiting, I am overrun by the monsters
that have been waiting outside.
Until, finally, I am one of them.

My last, final, shuffling thought is haunted by
that eternal single unblinking eye
that sees every breath, every motion in its land;

...with no cell phone, how will I be able to bathroom read again...?

and the hero's journey ends,
with one less hero than it began.

Weather Report: Rain today, sun tomorrow

In the slowly stoked mornings of mist and madness,
when the winter wind's hands make their final
gasping grab at the growling sunlight of spring.
When the tress, thrashed and torn
are bent over, while fitfully
the world quakes in its sleep.

To imagine a time without weather reports
when the future was just what we could see,
how much more, frightening or beautiful,
must this land have seemed to be?

Standing in the doorway, teasing the violence
as gusts rip and tear at my sleeves.
I see the rain falling sideways,
and I feel the cold biting deep.

Alone, I imagine no building behind me
no sanctuary or warm relief.
But what must it have been like to stand
at a cave entrance and wonder when,
or if,
the rain would ever cease.