If a dream can explain the toilet, what does it say about me?

THE TOILET

If a dream has meaning,

Gathering the nuts and bolts of metaphor from the actions of a day

To fix together some kind of message

Or desperate warning against the direction taken

Delivered while asleep before morning,

Then how shall I explain the toilet?

I am scouring emails and folders and notebooks

For names and addresses deleted

By a mirror drive backup computer meltdown and cloud failure

That erased you all from my database to leave a clean and shiny blank space.

I am searching for evidence of your existence - and when it met mine,

Usually in some dining room or other, when you asked for invitations

And I made a note of that moment in time.

Now my art show is imminent.

At night in my sleep I renovate a London house, the guest toilet of which

Is outside, up the road, on a street corner,

Protruding from the pavement like a post box

For human excrement. Before I wake

I check beneath the lid and see it is used by strangers in the night,

Under cover of darkness, keeping it tidy.