The End of the Year

Spent the last few days of December
squatting in the shitter, expelling what seemed like
a never-ending stream of fecal matter.

It was baffling; my meals had been far from exotic,

in fact, I hadn't eaten much all week.

My bowels became an excremental clock,

striking every hour without exception,

as if my body was incrementally being purged

of the year's dregs, emptying itself out

so as to start off fresh. It could have been worse. 

The other day a woman at work

was heard screaming in the lower level restroom,

apparently trying to give herself an enema.

Of course, it's tempting to make cracks

about these events, and how, looking back, 

they seem indicative of the type of year it's been.

Besides, our discomfort about defecation still compels us

to titter when the subject enters conversation.

But I felt for that poor woman, shuddered at her frustration.

It's hard to move forward when you're doubled over,

clutching your stomach. My own biggest goal in 2011

was to unblock my own psychic constipation,

to stop holding in the lifetime's worth of shit

that had accumulated in my system.

I made a concerted effort to gaze into that chasm,

to face the ordure armada down there in the basin,

and to accept the truth about myself, no matter

how offensive the bouquet. I long to create 

something beautiful from that waste.

Like a virgin roll of tissue, the new year awaits.