The American Costume Party

Flashing lights explode in your eyes
Like colored shrapnel.

Second by second,
Attacking music shakes your eardrums
Near to goo.

Now and then.
Now and then, but rarely
Some woman dances
Her authentic sexuality,

Shows the world
What sexual beauty
Really means.

She’s ignored. Usually.

While seventy-six men cram
To watch a young girl,
With smoother skin
And firmer belly,
Who can’t dance
Pretend to dance.

Strip clubs are lonely.

Some of us in America
Want to believe sex is sacred,
Some of us in America
Want to believe sex is filth,

But who cares to believe the truth?

Strip clubs are lonely.

If you look beyond
The sacred,
And if you look beyond
The filth,

Sex stares back at you
With ancient eyes.
With primate eyes.

But who cares for beauty,
The beauty of someone’s authentic
Sexuality?

Strip clubs are lonely.

Shrapnel lights and attacking noise
Clothe dancers on dollar strewn stages
In blaring clubs where nearly every man

Is a costumed party of one
Dressed up in gratuitous contempt
For the dancers
(Which is actually loathing for himself),

And almost no one
Has come naked
And desiring to see

Anything real.

(Strip clubs are lonely.)