I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it
But personally it threw me
I even felt a little uncomfortable
Yes, even I – yours truly
Catching the unexpected sight
That lay betwixt my legs
With knickers heading ankleward
And sleep still in my head
A paperclip in a bowl of white
When you’ve been dreaming half the night
Perhaps in itself not so strange a sight
But staring up at me, not right
The world had lost what sanity
Remained to it – insanitary
Metal curves glinted through the blue-tinted
Water in the bottom of the lavatory.
Now how the hell did that get there?
All sorts of scenarios floated through
The sudden space between my ears
As I gazed in wonderment, sans clue
Out of place as an office tool
In the Monday morning, air-conditioned
Chill of a corporate bathroom stall
At odds with surroundings can be positioned.
A mundane mystery, unmoved here
It can’t be shifted by the flush
Of a girl in a hurry to embrace the pure
Delights of the kitchenette thermos flask
Filled with a mud-like java ooze
And the plastic snap-tub biscuit tin
In individual wrappers snooze
The office worker’s breakfast sin
Bought to bolster her resolve
To tackle the horrors yet in store
With an ever-abundant inbox, filled
Overflowing with weekend’s weighty chore
To help unravel the tangled threads
Of under-worded communications
By those whose double shift’s preparation
For the stats release to the waiting nation.
So what to do with this sad item
Displaced object, much abused
With little now to recommend it
Be retrieved and so, reused…
Poor Clippy, sadly suicidal
Jumped the rim and sank his shame
At such clear speech – misinformation
Too few letters to his name
Made redundant since the Nineties’
Macro software eased our pain
Now enshrined in more than pixels
From his ignominy, fame.
Katherine Shirley 