To flush or not to—Why ask?
The infrared eye is trained on your—
let’s call it shifting positions—
while on other continents,
no levers, no stalls, no queues
forestall the bending of knees,
the bowing low to give back
to earth the earth we make.

My first electronic IBM
lagged between the compression
of a key, the whirl of the daisy
wheel, and the hammer of black
onto 8½X11.  Something of
mystery and awe 
in that gap—something of
faith (can I help bringing

God into this?)  that some grace
would be granted, something for which
I hadn’t known to hope—an
angel to save me from the angst
of having to produce,
a muse to spirit what’s in me
to clean copy for the world.
But nothing of awe

in the head spraying
back dejecta not quite released,
this cocky self-proclaimed bidet assuming
its own Ps and Qs of privy etiquette.
Whatever you do do, it nyaaahs
like Bugs Bunny to rebuff you

—Blast, Blast—
in the midst of your void.

If you are done, you can wait
while the cables you laid, scuds you
launched, bullets you stonked
float.  Float.  Wave your hand
in front of the winking eye.  Press
the weensy rubber button. Nothing,
nothing launches the incommodious
self-regulating loo. Or what about

the non-stop hopper?  There’s no kid
whiz enough to poop out
the automatic bowl whose leaky flapper
keeps wheezing and gushing,
wheezing and gushing
like someone trying to memorize
What was it again, I was supposed to do?
Where are the days when night soil

grew cruciform veggies and scat
led hunter to dinner?  Along our highways,
the Self-Storage barracks—ranks
of garages that receive neither V- nor BM-Ws—
are all backed-up with closet ejecta, daisy-picking
diaries, and other crap—as if we could
ambush our future, as if we had a choice of self—
flushing or not.