“…democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism; but they will not endure aristocracy.”

                                                                                                Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

The john sullied by all and sundry streaming

into the palace to see the work screams

USA in all its glorious gaudiness.

Prez gave his blessing to the precious thing.

The Lion Pope was miffed.  Although it must be said,

the thing is not unlike the décor with which

the pope and president alike bedeck their homes.

*

“Please, can I, mum? I really need to go. Reeeally…”

A kid, drawing the long vowel out as if it were

the very squealing of his bowels, tugs at his mother’s

arm, insisting pesteringly. A guide shrugs. “No rule

‘gainst that,” he says. “That is, in fact—” (a sheepish look)

“what it is for.” Kid (beaming) seats himself upon

the pan. Loud farts and a flush. Shouts out. “Hey mum!

There’s no bog roll in here.” “Christ sakes.” She bundles in

with hankies and tissues fished out of her bag.

Kid smirks. “Thanks mum,” he grins. Then suddenly

he feels a coldness about him and starts to cry.

The ghost of Arabella wishes so much

that she could flush this little shit away.

Reminds her of someone once close. “And who,

for the sake of God almighty,” she’d add

if she could in piercing, barking voice,

“let these unholy roundheads in to sully

the place and lower the tone?”  She leaves a cold

aftertouch. Appears a little to the boy.

He glimpses her undead smile smiling. Screams.

White as a ghost and pale as if he’d seen one.

(He has.) Faints. Scarred by this apparition

now for life. Mum fusses. Arabella shrugs.

*

“I need to go too.” A biker barges in.

“This is democracy,” the ghost huffs, rolling

her pale dark deep-set black-rimmed eyes. “If that’s

the least worst option. I’d honestly go for worse.”