of beauty, but that loses to the darkness

The light bulb
in the bathroom sparked
out again.

Our bathroom
is beautiful,
in its way. Its
outline sticks to me
even now in the dark: those water lines
on shower curtains, the faint
smell of their mildew, the dried bit of soap
waxed at the end of the hand soap dispenser,
the partly unraveled spool of toilet paper.

Here is housed
at least some obscured
impression
of beauty, but that loses to the darkness
at the loss of a light bulb.

Yet, I believe.
A simple screwing fix will fix it.

After, I will again (easily and without hallway light)
prop up the toilet seat without inadvertently
touching the spots where pee
has splashed and dried. Then I remember.
At the very least
a week will pass without me
replacing what has burned out.
My hands will surely touch dried pee in that time.

Oh, the sickness inside of me!

Friends, do not despair.
In the inevitable interim of darkness
I will wash my hands often of their
foul mishaps.

When the hand soap runs
out, though, I will not replenish it
for also a week or two.

Oh, the sickness that is inside of me!

Yet, friends, there is salvation
in the kitchen soap.
Then once the kitchen soap
has failed I will get trendy
and deny our deep American germ
hyper-phobia.
That in turn will turn
its course and disappoint me for its lack of permanent
Godliness. Then on and on. If I were a fisherman
I would be fishing
all day and never
catching fish.
I will come back exhausted (with Jesus frying smoky fish on the sand)
to my need
for a bathroom light, and I will understand
that even bathroom lights (God forbid it!) are temporary
gadgets we screw around with for only a time, here,

where the beauty is always obscure.

No, friends, the bathrooms we
are destined for…
oh, if you could only see
them! Nothing dimmed,
nothing blurred, no need
for the temporal strife of
gadgets
and screwing.
Soon will be a not
yet bathroom and we shall
dispel with every cursory box of small strike matches
with their small flames of dis-flagellating hell.

Imagine it, all our shit
and no foul smell.