To Shave or Not to Shave

[based on a few requests to post, after my discussion of the word "cunt" in my poetry workshop; originally published in John Barlow's "Pyschic Rotunda IV/V", with a little help from Shakespeare]

To shave or not to shave,--that is the question:--
Whether tis nobler in the pussy to suffer
The nicks and ingrown hairs caused by dull blades,
or to take razor against a sea of pubic troubles,
And by shaving end them?—To let them die,--to choke cunnilingualists,--
No more; and by not shaving to say we end
The cunt-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wisht. To cut,--to shave;--
To shave! perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that smooth dream what dreams may come,
When admirers have shuffled off this bare and mortal cunt,
Must give us pause: there’s the fear
That makes a hairy pussy of so long life:
For who would bear the nicks and cuts of blades,
The shaver’s wrong, the proud woman’s hairy,
The pangs of despised hair, the lover’s delay,
The insolence of unshaven pussy, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unshaved takes,
When she herself might her coitus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat over a hairy snatch?
But that the dread of hair in the teeth,--
The undiscover’d wiry pubis from whose bourn
No sexual adventurer returns,--puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those hairs we have
Than shave the ingrowns that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of smoothed pussy
Is sickled o’er with the dark cast of follicles;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their razors turn awry,
And lose the blade of action,—No longer soft you now!
The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my skin remembered.