Toilet Door poetry ranges from the eclectic, to the obscure, to the insane, the beautiful, and the hilarious. A warning before you read this blog post though, much of it also contains, frankly, toilet language! All nicely asterisked out, but if colourful language offends you, you may want to skip to the next post.

All of these messages will presumably one day be clues to civilisations that come after us as to what our life was like. They will puzzle and pore over obscure graffiti like:
“The Candle is burning and the wax ain’t happy”
and
“Check yourself b4 you wr-wr-wr-wreck yourself!”
Both of which were on toilet doors in the Foundry, in Old St … although it does not mention which country, unfortunately!

Perhaps the most mundane and oft-repeated poem (at least in my home country, Australia), found on toilet doors is this one:
Here I sit,
Broken hearted,
Tried to ****,
But only farted.Now, the only reason that I have chosen to repeat this inane, gratiuitous use of four letter words (no matter how amusing they might be the first time you hear them!), is because some inventive people have made up variations on the same theme! This is a good one, if a little graphic (and another good reason for installing foot pulls!):

Here I lie in stinky vapor,
Because some bastard stole the toilet paper,
Shall I lie, or shall I linger,
Or shall I be forced to use my finger.

This other very common gratuitous use of potty language is found throughout the Western world :
I came here
To **** and stink,
But all I do
Is sit and think.

However, this amusing variation is also found on the internet!
Some come here to sit and think,
Some come here to **** and stink,
But I come here to scratch my balls,
And read the bull**** on the walls…

This is one of my favourites … because it is clever, and for toilet poetry, does n ot contain one expletive! The source mentions it as a Ministry of Environment advertisement … but I think it was more likely put there by the cleaning staff, and given the tag “Ministry of the Environment” to give it a bit more authority. Regardless… very clever use of language!
We aim to please.
You aim too, please!

Sometimes it is quite obvious that all people do is come there to sit and think … and then let those thoughts spew randomly, with pieces missing, insane asylum style, onto the walls via their permanent markers! Here is a great example:
“Fast face. Kevin was a snail in voice and sleep. He didn’t like birds much”.

Now surely that means something to someone. Surely? But what that is, I don’t think I could even guess at, even though I consider myself to have a natural insane streak!
For your own amusement or wonderment, here are some of the other truly crazy ramblings from toilet doors:
The Rule is to shuffle, then reorganize

Make Doherty History

Monkey swallows the universe

Now, I wonder what traditional toilet door poetry might have been like? Perhaps the ‘kiss and tell’ variety of toilet door graffiti might have been something like “Mary has an excellent décolletage!”, or “Harry kisses like a cod” … things have degenerated somewhat nowadays! Though perhaps, it is only because we can’t find any inspiration in the horrible, germy, uninspired door furniture that invariably adorns public loos.

Any other ideas on traditional toilet door poetry? Feel free to add them!

Photo credits: Toilet by Tom Finch Toilet door by Queen of the desert

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