International Masturbation Month

Daffodildo

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Daffodildo
–May Swenson

A daffodil from Emily’s lot
I lay beside her headstone
on the first day of May.
I brought
another with me, threaded
through my buttonhole, the spawn
of ancestor she planted
where, today,
I trod her lawn.
A yellow small decanter
of her perfume, hermit-wild
and without a stopper,
next to her stone I filed
to give her back her property—
it’s well it cannot spill.
Lolling on my jacket,
Emily’s other daffodil.

Now, rocking to the racket
of the train, I try
recalling all her parlor’s
penetration of my eye,
remembering mainly spartan
sunlight through the dimity
of the window-bay, evoking
her white-dressed anonymity.
I remember, as if spoken
in my head: “I’m
nobody! Who
are you?”
thinking
how liked by time
she still is. It has linked
the hemlocks closer in their
hedge so that her privacy
remains. A denser lair,
in fact, than when she was alive
and looked through that bay
on the long garden
where I looked today.

Another lady is its warden
now. She smells like bread
and butter. A New England pug-
face, she’s 87, may be dead
before another host of plugless
yellow daintycups
springs next spring in the grass.
(What if one white bulb still sups
sun-time that Emily’s shoe passed
over?) That old
black-dressed lady told
me, “Here’s where
she soaked her gowns in this square
copper boiler on hot bricks.” Whiteness
takes much washing. “Oh, her chair’”
she said, suddenly sprightly,
leading me up the stair
to a blue bedroom, “Mustn’t forget to
show you
that. It’s stored
in a closet.” She brought out
a seat for a four-
year-old, only the cane devoutly
replaced, the ladderback and
legs of cherrywood original.
“An awe came on the trinket,”
one article her hand
would have known all
its life.
“Geneva’s farthest skill,”
I pondered,
“can’t put the puppet
bowing,” and retrieved
an answer,

“I dwell
in Possibility —
a fairer
house than Prose.” Yellow
bells in the still
air of their green room
out there
under the upstair window
mutely swung.
Shining through their cups,
her sunny ghost
passed down the rows.
“A word is dead
when it is said,
some say.
I say
it just begins to live that day.”

To her headstone I walked uphill.
It stands white without arrogance
on a green plot
that is her myth-filled
lot
now. Almost blank. Relatives
shoulder her in a straight rank.
Emily, 130 years older
since you took your
little throne
when you were four,
I crane
but can never
gain
that high chair
where you will ever
sit! Alone.

Self-confessed, and rocking
to the racket of the train,
I play back how
I picked you for my pocket,
stooped at your plain
stone.
One gold dildo
I leave you from the host
I stole;
the other, holy,
I will keep until
it shrinks to ghost.
“Disdaining men,
and oxygen,”
your grassy
breast I kiss
and make
this vow, Emily, to “take
vaster
attitudes—and strut upon my stem.”

“Finger to finger, now she’s mine”

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The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator
-Anne Sexton

The end of the affair is always death.
She’s my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she’s mine.
She’s not too far. She’s my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night alone, I marry the bed.

I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute’s speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night alone I marry the bed.

She took you the way a woman takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today’s paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

“sometimes your hand is all you have”

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Ode to Masturbation
-Ocean Vuong
because you
were never holy
only beautiful
enough
to be found
with a hook

in your mouth
water shook
like sparks
as they pulled
you up
& sometimes

your hand
is all you have
to hold
yourself
to this world
because it’s

the sound
not the prayer
that enters
the thunder not
the lightning
that wakes you

in lonely midnight
sheets holy
water smeared
between your thighs
where no man
ever drowned

from too much
thirst & when
is the cumshot not
an articulation
of chewed stars
go ahead—lift

the sugar-
crusted thumb
& teach
the tongue
of unbridled
nourishment.

to be lost in
an image
is to find within it
a door. so close
your eyes
& open reach

down with every rib
humming
the desperation
of unstruck
piano keys
some call this being

human some call this
walking but
you already know
it’s the briefest form
of flight yes even
the saints

remember this
the if under every
utterance
beneath
the breath brimmed
like cherry blossoms

foaming into no one’s
springtime
how often these lines
resemble claw marks
of your brothers
being dragged

away from you
you whose name
not heard
by the ear
but the smallest bones
in the graves you

who ignite the april air
with all your petals’
here here here who
twist through
barbedwired light
despite knowing

how color beckons
decapitation
i reach down
looking for you
in american dirt
in towns with names

like hope
celebration
success & sweet
lips like money
laramie jasper
& sanford towns

whose trees know
the weight of history
can bend their branches
to breaking
lines whose roots burrow
through stones

& hard facts
gathering
the memory of rust
& iron
mandibles
& amethyst yes

touch yourself
like this part
the softest wound’s
unhealable
hunger
after all

the lord cut you
here
to remind us
where he came from
pin this antlered
body back

to earth
cry out
until the dark fluents
each faceless
beast banished
from the ark

as you scrape the salt
off the cunt-cock
& call it
daylight
don’t
be afraid

to be this
illuminated
to be so bright
& empty
the bullets pass
right through

you
thinking
they have reached
the sky
as you press
your hand

to a blood-warm
body
like a word
being nailed
to its meaning
& lives

May for the M word

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May is National Masturbation Month. In fact it’s International Masturbation Month! I will stick with poetry, which had its month in the sun during April, but masturbation is still an interesting and compelling topic.

“Ordinary people who do it think there’s something wrong with them, and it’s painted as a pathetic third choice if you can’t get someone to have sex with you. In fact, if you can shake off this bad rap, masturbation is amazing. It can provide extraordinary pleasure, or just help you get to sleep, teach you about your body and sexual responses, and help keep the blood flowing in the nethers, as they might say on Firefly. It’s good for you, unless you do it so much that you forget to eat or run afoul of the laws of physics — here I’m really talking about friction.”

Every article about the existence of masturbation month reminds us of Bill Clinton’s no-nonsense US Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, who wanted to normalize masturbation as healthy. And, hell’s bells, people – it is. We all do it. But this was back in 1994 and her approach was most certainly not accepted in the spirit in which it was meant. Contextually, Elders delivered this as a part of World AIDS Day message – total abstinence from all sexuality is unrealistic, but if we were to destigmatize masturbation, which seems like a pretty innocuous message to me, perhaps we’d not only open up dialogue about sexuality and sexual health in general but might stave off premature (and uninformed) sexual activity. Her message – no surprise – was taken to its extreme and false interpretation:

“She meant that we should teach kids that it’s okay to masturbate. Spin media decided that her message was: “let’s bring some dildos to class and teach these kindergartners to have some fun!” Not the situation Elders was suggesting. She later went on to explain that masturbation could prevent the spread of AIDS; unfortunately, her bold statements led to a forced resignation.”

And you know – sometimes masturbation might have been a better option for a lot of people. Case in point: woman hires male prostitute (referred to in the article as a “professional priapist”) in Germany and becomes pregnant. She tries to track down this unwitting sperm donor/once-owner to claim child support. But Germany’s rigid data privacy laws prevailed on the side of protecting the man’s anonymity.

Meanwhile, here’s a fun masturbation infographic. With wanking stats, not an infographic of masturbation itself.

And of course there’s a poem even for this. Many, in fact, but today’s is from Israel.

MASTURBATION
–Yona Wallach
You slept again with Mr. No Man
loved his empty glance
and hugged his absent body.

The eyes of your lover look toward a foreign point
not exactly at you not on you,
he’s young and already so bitter.

The love that penetrated your flesh for an instant
fills your body and soul with heat
from the tips of your hair to your inner organs,

leaving you again with Mr. No Man
stroking with no hand your body
that responds with no emotion no expression
no heat on each stroke –

You showed the poem to your young lover
he responds with rage and says that it’s bad
and no poem at all and turns his back,
perhaps he thinks that he’s no man,

does he think that he’s no man?
doesn’t understand poetry, with feeling
demands too much, hours,
when five minutes of love would suffice
to fill an entire day with the heat required,

no man chills your emotions freezes
your body, the chill spreads through your limbs
freezing your cheeks and sending a nervous shudder
from the curve of a cheek to the opposite eye and extinguishing
the bud of emotion and sending the taste of pain
to the gullet to different parts of the neck and to the back.

You explain to your lover the meaning of the time of
love, five minutes are like hours
five hours even, there are all kinds, it’s worth it
to use all possible times whenever
for it’s impossible before work in the morning
to love three hours you have to warm up and that’s it
he catches on fast and tries but is disappointed
it doesn’t seem nice to him so fast
he wants it more plentiful than it is,
but he’s smart and there’s a chance an opportunity
like this might not return in his short lifetime
you have to change your ideas a little and adjust to the situation,
but again he’s alone with himself and with you
and demands the strength of a night in a brief morning.

You send a cold look to no man
and promise to meet him again in the evening
for sure he’ll  return, he is spiritual death
he gives the coldest look
and stands by you waiting to catch each feeling
through the air, to turn it into complete emptiness into nothingness.

You studied your lover’s look
his dark eyes two berries
that threaten to send a glance as soft
as the memory of the taste of grapes, looking in terror
and more than this blind nerves
that endanger
the soft shoots of feeling and love.

Will he go crazy you ask, will he lose,
the wind’s movement over his face marks
tracks that you expertly decipher,
you give voice to cheerful sounds
of stretching, he cooperates for a moment sends a smile
and you turn him inward with self-love
bring him out and stare at him as at a jewel,
he emerges from the old songs and he
is one of their heroes, also his beauty
is such, he is one of the wondrous names
so lost in the frightened anxious
being in the womb of society,
he will be born out of there even more monstrous
be born anew and will love you
each morning  as it should be as he is able,

he will get used to your prostitution whose source is internal
and logical otherwise it wouldn’t emerge
and its decency according to each honorable homely understanding
that distinguishes between what and how when and where,
and his love will wear less dead forms,
and you will surrender again to Mr. No Man
in the difficult moments he will freeze your fingers
stroking yourself with different desires,

but poems are just a technicality
acquired during years of living
the hero will live in every poetic form
as third person or first or second,

he will understand this also
will live as first person, second or third
the impression he makes is mainly that he
lives as third person with himself
speaks about himself as about he as about someone you’ve tired of,
speaks separates between himself and his sex
speaks about himself as about he and not about these his emotions
that’s someone else altogether the other
of whom he is jealous of whom he will be afraid,
sex that’s him, he gives it to him
you are his mother bring him up
give him back his confidence his faith in himself
you meet with Mr. No Man and learn about
other people about the other he
even though the he could be all kinds of natures
you join his separated sex to himself
it I feel it I sense it,
I my body my soul myself and flesh myself,
he will be cultivated will love operas and emotions,
will generalize with more ease about others of his kind,
because the fruit of love is short lived
even more than the fruits of a poem like this.