Phantoms
November 30, 2004 by
George Stanley
Filed under Probes
Wanking,
don’t call up phantoms.
They hang around,
drinking your beer,
sprawled on the couch in their underwear,
pretending to read the Economist.
*
I sent this poem to Stan. He e-mailed back:
“Wanking” is British. How about “jacking off”?
I defended “wanking” as “matter-of-fact.”
(To me, “jacking off” reeked
of adolescent puritanical shame & defiance.)
*
I went to the library. There, on the New Non-Fiction shelf
was Ginsberg’s Death & Fame. In a poem titled “Jacking Off,”
Ginsberg, 70, regales himself with phantoms:
“Who showed up?” Joe S., Huck, “Tom G.
big cocked passed through my dream bed, didn’t stay . . .
“Ah John got you . . . leather handcuffs & strap
binding hand & feet helpless,
Leather collar roped to the bedstead’s head . . .
Spank good & hard, slap his ass / let him writhe . . .
“So came on that unfamiliar fear
savage control over
Adonis body, willing
eager — bound to be true.”
*
The shame & defiance I feel
are my own, not language’s –
– and to be so dismissive,
nay, intolerant, of the phantoms –
helpless (yes!) half-beings
that one must oneself be
a half-being
to touch
Vancouver, Dec. 1, 2004