Jane the Ecdysiast's Everywhere Days

Jane dances.
In silver heels, high as two phonebooks.
Janet sashays.
Blows winks and kisses, dripping bargain-bin red lipstick.

Jane disrobes.
First her bra and then the rest.
Jane blushes.
Underneath ten years of makeup and rewashed hope.

Ten absent men
swallow cheap beer and
forget about their wives, girlfriends.
their whomevers.

Ten, worked men clutching oily
dollars, gnarled, angry dollars, between
calloused, tar-stained fingers.

Glug, Glug,
another bra hits the ground.

Jane once had a clever idea for the name
of a lipstick color. She'll never remember it now.
and blushes every time she tries.

Another ten men.
hot stage lights reflect off flop sweat.

Glug Glug.
thrill-less, pill-less and broke.
Nowhere else to go.

Jane collects dollars from the stage.
Jane, she uses the name Stormy, pushes
another drunk hand away from her
too naked legs.

Where is the bouncer when you need him.
Out back with Jade. That's why she gets
the good shifts.

What was the name of that lipstick color,
she begs herself, sweating through
the powder on her face. mascara starting
to run.

Another grunt from the front.
An old man with a white beard
has fallen asleep.

Jane sleeps around, drunk.
You lose your self respect after a while.
Not because of the job, because of the men.
Maybe It was stolen a long time ago.
Maybe too long and so far gone
it wont ever come back.

The front door opens and the stage
drowns in real light, daylight,
and brows crinkle and angry men slur
hate from sulky, puffy faces. and another
groping fatso stumbles to the stage.

That's how it goes.
That's a real job.

That's the suffer the kids
won't ever know about.

That's Jane the Ecdysiast's Everywhere Days.