Black Toilet

by Michael Borth

Between shells made to corner a house

Writhes in DVD and the pallor of cinema

Wherein muscles glare the encoded protein

To muster aggressive narcotics peopled in the

Yellow bathroom of the revealed deodorant.

Here is where the sausage is made. By the liters

And liters of cola. By the shine left by delicatessen

Meat. By mysterious key and the whites of mail.

A window for the printed address. The bedroom

Is a hotel museum. The upstairs room the hull

Of a led zeppelin dream. You can hear the carts

Rattling and coasting to the end of the lots. Gunshots

And predators and delivering the donuts. Each is

Only trying to save himself. From the gravitations.

From the trees that line the drives to hilled prisons.

From the sway of a birch in the asylum yard. From

The gavel of sheer courts. Did you see his toilet.

It has become completely black. His gift to me from

The athletic pilgrimage to the source of the liquor. 

A fermented hand in the cellar of jars. Tones of redlight.

Broken drum solos from the grocery speaker. Divided

By aisles in a rapture of those red boxes that once ejected

Coupons. Satiated and wandering. John Smith saved by

The favorite daughter of the king. Bound by heeled shoes.

By the man who smelled my mother’s foot in whatever

Store. We move oppressed by our own curious erotics. 

Led by the proliferation of stadium lighting. In breath

Tragedy before the AM rains. Or tattered copies of Greek

Plays. This symbol has become a secret card. The only

Arcanum worth anything. Attend to the common things. 

Go insane in the offered containers. Do not bring the

Demonia from the mirror speckled with paste. I move

The objects now. A million miles away. Cleaning where

He has installed himself in the assembled throne. Wood

Infrastructure and black screw and escaping yellow clouds. 


Michael Borth is the author of As I Roam The Life Cycle and The World Dreamer

Image credit: Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) The Swan, No. 18 (1914 -1915) Artvee.com