Washroom Lamentation
Michael Meyerhofer

Why, oh why, can’t there be music
in men’s rooms? A little Bach or Chopin
to drown out the sad mechanics

permeating college campuses, factories,
brokerage firms, even the Pentagon
though I’ve never been there,

can only presume the same recycling
of orphaned molecules—beautiful, really,
how they transcend our shame,

our petty American degradation.
Still, I think I’d prefer a horn section,
the suggestion of folding chairs,

and from time to time, a bass drum
that rattles these shining mirrors
like an earthquake; like Lucifer, falling.

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