An Ode to Toilet Paper

O, you magnificent wood pulp wonder,

Cleansing and cleaning the unspoken under.

Whether roughly rigid or softly supple,

You save us daily from a mess of trouble.

One sheet, two sheets, three sheets, four,

What did we do in times before?

In those bygone days of the cave,

When copping a squat was an act of the brave,

What did we reach for at the end of our deed?

Some evil coarse bark, or an incessant weed?

Was it soft vellum, the skin of some beast,

Or did we not care about the stink in our crease?

As populations did grow and civilizations did rise,

We took our filthy act and moved it inside.

Safer though we were in our own little loos,

The dilemma endured as we finished our poos.

A piece of newsprint or a naked corn cob,

Proved quite sufficient to finish the job.

But one had to wonder, cleaning their crannies,

If we had to endure irritated ink-stained fannies?

All our prayers were soon answered in 1857,

When Gayetty delivered a gift straight from heaven,

Labeled and sold as medicated paper,

This wonder did alter our bowel-moving nature.

Time then moved on, as often will happen,

And TP became something taken for granted.

Sitting there daily in its own burnished cradle,

We never reward it for being so faithful.

But when calamity came, like many times before,

We found ourselves engaged in a toilet tissue war.

Fighting to the death for that last fluffy sheet,

A craven wolf battling for fresh bloody meat.

When next you pay tribute to the almighty throne,

Give a nod, and know that you are never alone.

Toilet paper will be there, through thick and thin,

Ready and waiting for the dirty work to begin.