Poem: "The Mule Patrol"
This poem came out of the January 8, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from rhodielady_47. It also fills the "handcuffed / bound together" square in my Trope Bingo card. Folks voted to sponsor this via the general fund.
Format: Poetry
Title: "The Mule Patrol"
Fandom: Original (stand-alone)
Summary: You are a soldier with enough good sense to behave yourself in a multi-species latrine. Those with less sense attract the attention of the Mule Patrol.
Required Warnings: No standard warnings apply. Some crude language and humor appear.
The Mule Patrol
You learned quick
not to make trouble in the latrines
if you knew what was good for you.
You saw some pretty strange latrines
on shore leave, setting down on alien planets,
and you figured out how to make them work
even if it meant jerry-rigging handles from your gear
or wiping your ass with a napkin from your pocket
because half the aliens didn't stock toilet paper,
and you did not simply piss in the sink
because some people drank out of there
for reasons best left to the xenobiologists to explain
and not for the likes of space marines
to ponder with pecker in hand.
You also did not make fun of the aliens
or their ridiculous clashing skin colors like camo run mad
or the private parts they aimed at the facilities,
no matter how large or how small said parts might be
or what dirty jokes the idiot next to you might be telling,
because if you did, quick as a wink
you'd find yourself handcuffed to that idiot while
the Mule Patrol explained in those dulcet drill-sergeant tones
just what a disgrace to the uniform you were
and how somebody ought to smack your momma.
You did not make fun of the Mule Patrol either,
even if they looked like god's gift to comics
with long floppy ears and blunt muzzles
and buck teeth the size of bick-lighters.
You just did not,
because everyone had heard Bottom's Tale,
about how one especially educated idiot
had regaled the Mule Patrol with a scene
from some ancient play about a jackass
who wound up with the head of an actual donkey,
and it was barracks legend that the Mule Patrol
had handcuffed him to the ugliest whore in town
before lifting his paycheck to treat all her johnnies,
and no sir, there would not be enough booze
in the biggest bar of the galaxy
to drown those memories.
You simply sighed over the contraption on the wall,
ignored the pencil-dick on your left and the elephant trunk on your right,
used a wrench to open the irising lid of the whizzgig,
did your business and walked out again
without becoming part of a story
that would buy someone else's beer for a week.