115. An Incontinent Soliloquy


To pee, or not to pee – that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind
to suffer a bloated bladder
or humilated loins –
To rise, to dream no more,
Or to trust the dream as
That, but a dream,
and relieve myself.

‘Tis a constipation
Devoutly to be wished. 
To rise, to weep —
To sleep, to dream —
ay, there’s the rub,
for is that sleep less dreamlike, 
lest we shuffle
off mortal coil 
And give way to piss?

The pangs of uncertainty,
the bladder’s delay,
The insolence of subconscience
and the urine –
When he himself might his quietus make
with a bare butkin?
To grunt and sweat upon a toilet seat
in night’s dead still
but from the dread 
of something after dreams
makes us rather bear those soiled sheets
Than exert for a fly to the loo?

Thus cleanliness
does make busibodies of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is yellow, o’er 
the pale cast of sheets,
And enterprise of great piss and moment
With this regard their currents spew forth
And lose the name of a dream. 
Yet, to force wake upon oneself
Is a fashion of the same body 
that fails to keep lowed passion cork.
I feel nothing remiss
And trust in turn to piss.

— Soft you now,
thou unjust Willie! — 
Limp, in thy orifices
Be all thy shame remembered.