False Advertising

This is what we're conditioned
to expect at even modestly priced
hotels and motels.
The hotel I write of today
had NONE. Had to sign out
a towel. Seriously.
It was hilarious.

Hotels advertising the amenities - 

iron, coffee pot, all the other what-nots

one expects when you trade away the comfort 

of home, things just the way you like them,

for what the road can give - should realize

that with today's online reviews, a patron

such as I (or is it "such as me," I never can remember

and would look it up, but I'm on vacation, see,

and having Things To Do, I won't) can hardly

be assumed to ignore the current lack thereof.

Wrinkled, coffee fetched from

lobby seconds before breakfast's end, I had to

beg last night for towels, if you can believe it.

To be specific, towel singular, as in one.

Beg again for washcloth, oh this review will

be a winner. Trying not to lose salvation

as I type it, I cannot, considering those

who may be wooed by price alone, just let it go.

Fellow travelers must be warned, lest they arrive

one winter night with dust abounding,

caffeine-deprived, bone-tired, just get the room,

already, hot shower, cup o' joe, relax and watch

a movie. Guess again, wanderer. There's water,

toilet paper, queen-sized bed, and soap. But nope, those

amenities so promised? Not in sight. And if the 

towel man's in trouble as he was last night,

you'll be lucky not to dry off A/C goosebumped

flesh with a pillow case. Just don't say 

I didn't warn you.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013

Apparently, I have the privilege of selecting ads now to accompany my poems, and when I searched for "hotel" came up with hotel safes. Which would have come in handy on this trip, had I anything worth putting in it.