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PLEASE YOURSELF

  

Sixteen is when the gays want legal sex.

What happens when lads younger have a go

(at public schools and that) in most respects

is still outside the law.  Lesbians, though,

can smooch at any time, ’cause no one checks.

No hetero or homo is reported.

What they do is accepted—that’s all sorted.

  

What’s puzzling is that no one talks of rights

for narcissists.  Self-love, we must assume,

is still a love that dare not come to light,

though it is common, even in the womb.

(From the beginning, see, it’s out of sight!)

Kids do it in warm bathrooms and in war-zones,

especially when puberty pumps out hormones.

  

Sex lessons mention it, or so they say.

But my guess is that masturbation’s seen

as something children do, one kind of play.

Adults might do it sometimes in between

fulfilling sex when partners are away.

Jokes count on the absurd: ‘a poke, a stuff,

is not like the real thing but good enough.’

  

Words like ‘jerk off’ and ‘fondling one’s crack’

suggest a secret shame.  True, some lads (he-males)

say they toss off three times a day.  A stack

of smutty books and porn films picture females

using vibrators with the morning snack.

But where’s the film star who has made a stand,

admitting a loving friendship with his hand?

  

It’s usually supposed that girls and guys

devoted to the acts of self-relief

are maimed or somehow do not appetise.

The natural way in common-sense belief

concerns a dual, healthy exercise—

of frotting, arching, sweating, licking, spasms—

as two together peak in their orgasms.

  

That’s very nice, I wouldn’t want to stop ’em.

But yet I am perturbed that there’s a closet

which the self-pleasuring ones still have to hop in;

that they are looked upon like some deposit

that a cheap glass of wine leaves at the bottom.

Yet is it not quite often rather wizard

to rub one’s clit alone, or stroke the lizard?

  

For anyone of a liberal education

who fills in forms for jobs must sometimes hanker

for freedom, alongside Sexual Orientation,

to enter ‘Narcissist’ or simply ‘Wanker’

and feel a glow about the declaration!

There could be here a dam about to burst.

So raise your free hand.  Who will be the first?

   

Alan Marshfield

   

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