Elizabeth Barton
That satisfying sound
when piss hits the ground
like a high-speed locomotive ripping the air
in votive offering, unjabbed flow
baptising the grasses, accepting
defiance; reaction to the action
of the mandates imposed,
I was a karmic instrument
instigating toilet rebellion.
For every action there is
equal and opposite reaction.
Newton’s apple dropped,
the gravity of constraint;
denied the comfort of a public toilet,
a warm bush hovered
in the Natives today.
Nestled in the grasses
defying the Vaccine-passes.
The apple doesn’t fall far
and neither did the piss hitting
the shrubbery concealing me,
cloaked by trees while masked
folk sauntered past, oblivious.
Patrons lined up like sheep,
fumbling with their phones to sign in
to the municipal cubicle,
queued for a nature call
and presenting their credentials
to the government database.
Solitarily, I did what Nature intended;
intrinsic necessity, divine right of kings
basic to the seated throne
without phone, without surveillance!
What thoughts passed through my mind
when I knew it was time to unwind?
Natural law commands divine attention
from the flower bed to the stem,
and merged with my brain
my bladder did the talking.
I snaked out of the bushes, wove a crooked trail
across manicured lawns, through neatly trimmed trees,
a Dreamtime of consequence, and chortled
to see our driver looking for me
from the direction of the Superloo.
Cackling with laughter, she caught my voice
carried on the wind, an apparition
bilocated in the opposite direction;
she swung around and saw me sashay
across the street, past masked passersby.
Triumphantly, I announced I had
just anointed the native grasses,
avoided a toilet which demanded
Vaccine-passes, and turned a basic need
into an action anarchic and revolutionary.
We departed Taupo in a gale of laughter;
surfing the wave with the arriving Convoy
still flowed and sang in our lifted hearts,
cresting that moment a new joke unfurled;
latrines would never be the same thereafter.
Note: The poem was inspired during a trip to Taupo, to join the Convoy of February 2022, when New Zealanders gathered together to protest the COVID mandates imposed by the then Labour Government. Thousands drove en masse to the Parliament Buildings in Wellington. In Taupo, we stopped for a comfort stop and coffee. Laughing at the Vaccine passes imposed on the public (one of the topics of protest!) at a huge toilet facility in a local park, I took my chances in the nearby shrubbery.
Elizabeth Barton is an artist and poet from New Zealand. She has poetry published in numerous journals and anthologies including Vita Brevis Press, Literary Revelations, Flights, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine and Spillwords.com. She is the author of the award-winning pamphlet Mirrored Time from Hedgehog Poetry Press, and All Revolutions Begin This Way and Auroral, from Alien Buddha Press. Her art is in private and public collections worldwide including the V & A Museum Prints Collection, London. Website: www.elizabeth-barton.co. X: @DestinyAngel25
Featured photo by Ivan Radic (Wikimedia Commons)
