Psycho III

(Apologies to Hitchcock)

The beginnings of those thunderbolts
Often come in smaller volts,
The secrets of the cunning skies
Appearing daily in disguise,
Like this harmless seeming screw,
A careless dab of silver glue
On the shining chrome plate surface
Of the shower stall’s metropolis,
A drop-out in the population
Of this water-dripping nation;
But apparently not permanent, the bolt
Discreetly starts to molt,
Picking up the colors of the wall,
Lightening in window’s thrall,
Then morphing like the mercury
In Terminator III,
The anchors of our bathroom vault
In Lucasfilm revolt,
The theater in which we showered
Suddenly deflowered,
A lump of moving ambergris
The door to an abyss
Where the very plumbing of gestalt
Becomes the San Andreas fault
(The mind is marvelously thorough
In the boudoir’s chiaroscuro):
So common sense goes down the drain
And then comes burbling back again—
The mystery of the grim marauder
Is that it’s just a drop of water.

Tippet Alley
February 20th, 1996