Each day, I ascend the porcelain throne,
underneath a bamboo towel baldachin,
adorned with scrubs and apricot lotion,
at last I am alone.
And from this dais,
I am the monarch of the entire
tiled floor kingdom.
On my elongated seat,
double-flush system underneath,
I can sense the power behind the throne.
The fanfare of royalty when I reach for
a piece of my toilet paper escutcheon,
with a slow-close lid,
in this poise,
nothing goes to waste.
©2024 | K.F. Hartless
Prompt: Craft an ode. Take inspiration from Pablo Neruda, the Chilean-born poet and Nobel Prize Winner. While he is most famous in the English-speaking world for his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, he also wrote more than two hundred odes, and had a penchant for writing sometimes-long poems of appreciation for very common or mundane things. You can read English translations of “Ode to the Dictionary” at the bottom of this page, “Ode to My Socks” here, and “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market” here.
Yard Sale of Thoughts 
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