The Bathroom at Barnes and Noble

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I thought literature didn't come here,
but Whitman has followed me in.
He's in the stall next to mine,
and I can't help but imitate
his heavy, elderly urination.

I wonder if,
even in this human place,
genius climbs about his inner walls
like an insect on a spear of summer grass,
or if it, too, has slowed
like his tired and knowing urine
(every drop is knowing,
contains more vocabulary than I will ever come to know).

Upon my exit I see
Rilke waiting patiently,
inspecting his well-trimmed
moustache in the oil dust of
the bathroom mirror.
He does not notice me.

Homer paces the broken tile
tempted by so many strange
beasts:
the condom machine,
the faucets that
never quite
offer enough
water.

Ginsberg eyes competitors with a jealous grace
while Ovid carves his name in red into the wall's
cracked and tilted slate-

for a good time, call…

Petrarch, underneath, inscribes with old-fashioned
quill and ink,

Laura!

Grendel is shaving in front of one mirror,
Sandburg stands aloof
near another and notes the architecture
of the urinals;
Eliot, disgusted by these pigs, mumbles
in a heavy British drawl,
and through the thin, slight wall
I can hear Emily Dickinson
undoing thousands of intricate straps.

Dylan Thomas is drinking out of a toilet.
Bob Dylan is, too.

And I thought literature didn't come here,
to this strange place, where
even gods create not poetry but shit,
but Stevens and Williams are chatting about
how it felt to go bald overnight,
(to Stevens it was as if a great bird
came and robbed his scalp,
to Williams it was as if
he lost his hair)-
Seuss complains in his stall
that green eggs and ham give him gas-
Blake tosses a roll of toilet paper
all through the sweaty echo
hall and screams

screw your reason!

Hardy's soft eyes
sink,
but Sophocles responds

fuck your mother!

Whitman, still in his stall, sounds a barbaric yawp;
Sebald weeps into the shattered marble sink;
and even Shakespeare, readjusting his
starched Elizabethan collar,
combs his 17th century hair
over his 17th century bald spot,
ties his absurd little shoes,
and scurries out, trailing
a small piece of toilet paper,
smelling of bathroom soap.

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