Strip

The pub’s old-fashioned; it looks grey and seedy.
The clientele, all male, look lumpish, needy,
And when the stripper comes, their eyes are greedy.

With smile fixed firm upon her painted face,
She starts gyrating with a teasing grace,
Smoothly undressing at a languorous pace.

She struts through routine choreography
Removes her bra, and lets her breasts go free
The silent men watch her impassively.

And still they stare unmoving as she slips
The golden panties from her mobile hips,
Pauses a sec, then sensually unzips

Her smooth pink skin, and flings it open wide, 
To show the flesh and beating heart inside.
Her audience observes all this, dead-eyed.

The flesh from bone she now expertly rends,
So that it’s just her skeleton bops and bends
Seductively until the music ends.

Silence. She picks up flesh and skin, and drawers
So often dropped before on grubby floors.
The men are stirred to offer mild applause.

She dresses quickly, picks up a pint glass,
And then begins the customary pass
Among the men, who goggle at her arse,

Say nothing, but poke fivers in the pot
Because that is expected. They do not
Even try to meet her eye, or speak of what

They’ve seen, but, weekly ritual complete,
Get up, and, bodies drooping with defeat,
They head out to the grey indifferent street.

This is a selection from George Simmers’s recent poems, united only by the fact that they are all about human beings. It begins with a cumulative account of a riot, then settles to four disparate character studies. A depiction of a stripper’s audience is followed by a consideration of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, and the warders who guarded him. A reaction to a sentence about dictator poets leads to an argument that poets should not be Utopian, but that the most satisfactory genre is that of humane comedy. This is followed by such a comedy, a fanciful response to Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dor1an Gray. The collection is completed by three translations from Catullus, that most human of poets.

This short book (32 pages) costs £6 and is available from Lulu Press.

If you have any thoughts about this poem, or this publication, George Simmers  would be pleased to hear them