No, please don’t see me with them,
The men standing, pseudo-nonchalant
Fringing your pool of garish light
In their faint littoral of sticky furnishings.

Theirs is a ritual transaction with you,
With their comrades; one of feigned lust
And raucous social posturings in which
They claim the need to enter you

As they would on any street. But here
You entertain their fancies, join them in
Their hopeless game. No, I am the real
Pervert; I want instead to enter your mind.

How could this be for you, to be naked
In the light. Is there a power in that or
Do you detach and dance elsewhere, the
Nudity itself a cloak in which you hide?

I could never know. Even young I was not
As fair in frame or face and could not dance
To draw, excite, eroticise a room as you
For these few short years may do.

So how do you deal with the contempt?
We lesser things can hate you for the beauty
You possess by chance (the bitch!) but now
You’ll let us sneer as well at how it’s used.

You’ll circle up in that protective ring
Of pretty dancing girls and lumpy males.
Strippers, bouncers, an inevitable pairing
And there’s no judging in the clan of outcasts.

Announce your ancient trade, demand respect?
Yours is the final drama, and will never change;
Sally, My Salome of the city, cast off your veils
And I of course will offer up my head.