I walk to bathroom like to Roman senate:
shoulder-hung bath-towel toga-pendent.
However bearded myself I suppose
unlike Greek philosophers I bathe alone.
And like whenever drip by drip a cold
the hived compartment of your lungs controls
with a concrete and swimmy occupation,
and their walls have ruin in vibration,
cough; and cough wrenches up the stony-melt
and the rocks scratch up their conveyor belt;
and you look to solace in your headphones,
where a classical symphony intones;
but the crowd erupts in quiet measures
with their crumbling phlegm-architecture;
and they take up all your sharp hollow rolls
but you spit up phlegm at their control:
the music just reminds you of one thing
of which you needed no reminding:
thus my teeth twanging floss; thus the shower
say you are alone, you are a coward.
My hook-hung toga takes its vote: alone,
he is alone. Then my peeing makes me groan.
The senate-censure passes: I’m condemned.
What’s fit for loneliness a punishment?
Down the toilet sails my small castration:
loosened now is my better contemplation…