Jan 2018
Here’s to strippers, who don’t like to be called strippers,
Although smart women have been taking their clothes off
To spectacular effect since the dawn of time—
Go to the Brooklyn Museum and see the history of women, lesbians all,
Every woman you’ve ever dreamed of naked as the earth, shorn of leaves,
Like bon bons set out for Santa Claus,
St. Cyr’s dreams of bubbles—
The abstract strippers walking across my retina like nomads in the desert,
Her voice a meaty thing, chewing her way out of the toilet,
We want *** to drink from beautiful woman like rain—
The abstract expressionist beat method
Was born three years after Dylan Thomas died
And seven years before Sylvia Plath,
Decca had rejected the Beatles as out of style
Before anyone had ever really heard them, avant-garde has-beens maybe,
But Gypsy Rose Lee was still dancing and writing
And Martha Graham was still dancing and writing
And Isadora was looking down from her see-through cloud
So we could see up her headless tunic and Mary Wigman was a legend
Too big for Richard Wagner to conceive,
And Trakl and Kleist never met a great stripper
Like Toulouse Lautrec painted masterpieces
From the spurting blood of a syringe—
Doctors order sunshine and she shines
And rock and roll moved Bettie to jazz cellars
Where Pollack and Kerouac drink the wine—
The Soviet Union had good ugly strippers but that’s over now—
Now they’re pretty expensive but not any good,
If you were reading On The Road while crying over the death of Pollack
And laughing at the birth of rock and roll
While jerking off to Bettie in *******
You were there at the big bang—
Picasso and Einstein lining up behind TS Eliot and Pound to kiss your ***
Eugene O’Neill and Lenny Bruce looking on
From their basement apartment windows,
****** addled sailors waiting for 1969 (Hart Crane the only poet to beat himself to death---) Glacial ice melting
under Diana’s roller-coaster heat—
No color, line or shape, Araki, Gutai, Butoh and Kaiju emerging from Japan
After the war and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
All of this been subsumed into manga cosplay,
Though no one knows or is asking why
Mothers pride themselves on giving good head
They don’t close their eyes or dream of monsters,
It’s all about the prince no matter what lesbians say, lesbians like **** too
And they know where to get it but that’s too easy—
Better to have a crush on a stripper who won’t turn you away
Than a boy or a fashion model that needs money and drugs to survive,
Just give it time and an Asian girl will love you—
Although smart women have been taking their clothes off
To spectacular effect since the dawn of time—
Go to the Brooklyn Museum and see the history of women, lesbians all,
Every woman you’ve ever dreamed of naked as the earth, shorn of leaves,
Like bon bons set out for Santa Claus,
St. Cyr’s dreams of bubbles—
The abstract strippers walking across my retina like nomads in the desert,
Her voice a meaty thing, chewing her way out of the toilet,
We want *** to drink from beautiful woman like rain—
The abstract expressionist beat method
Was born three years after Dylan Thomas died
And seven years before Sylvia Plath,
Decca had rejected the Beatles as out of style
Before anyone had ever really heard them, avant-garde has-beens maybe,
But Gypsy Rose Lee was still dancing and writing
And Martha Graham was still dancing and writing
And Isadora was looking down from her see-through cloud
So we could see up her headless tunic and Mary Wigman was a legend
Too big for Richard Wagner to conceive,
And Trakl and Kleist never met a great stripper
Like Toulouse Lautrec painted masterpieces
From the spurting blood of a syringe—
Doctors order sunshine and she shines
And rock and roll moved Bettie to jazz cellars
Where Pollack and Kerouac drink the wine—
The Soviet Union had good ugly strippers but that’s over now—
Now they’re pretty expensive but not any good,
If you were reading On The Road while crying over the death of Pollack
And laughing at the birth of rock and roll
While jerking off to Bettie in *******
You were there at the big bang—
Picasso and Einstein lining up behind TS Eliot and Pound to kiss your ***
Eugene O’Neill and Lenny Bruce looking on
From their basement apartment windows,
****** addled sailors waiting for 1969 (Hart Crane the only poet to beat himself to death---) Glacial ice melting
under Diana’s roller-coaster heat—
No color, line or shape, Araki, Gutai, Butoh and Kaiju emerging from Japan
After the war and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
All of this been subsumed into manga cosplay,
Though no one knows or is asking why
Mothers pride themselves on giving good head
They don’t close their eyes or dream of monsters,
It’s all about the prince no matter what lesbians say, lesbians like **** too
And they know where to get it but that’s too easy—
Better to have a crush on a stripper who won’t turn you away
Than a boy or a fashion model that needs money and drugs to survive,
Just give it time and an Asian girl will love you—
