Pat Jones

ER Toilet

by Henry Quince

Move it, old man! I need to piss today,
right now, not half-way through next week!
Get on with it, you’re in my bloody way!
(I guess the last thing I should do is speak
and slow your dribble more.) Yeah, grunt and sway
and clutch the wall, but take your sluggish leak.

So, done at last? No need to turn away —
believe me, I have no desire to peek!
You shuffle around; I try to gaze elsewhere,
but now you’re in my face, that frail form shaking,
those baggy, watery eyes, their far-off stare.
What have you got? Is anything not aching?

It’s bad enough, this strapped-up football knee —
out of my road, you fifty-years-on Me!

Henry Quince has been published here and there. He lives in Australia with a big moustache.