Journey to Ixtlan

The poem “The Day That Lied” is about an actual weekend during which I lost Saturday. I spent the whole of Sunday believing that the next day was going to be the actual Sunday. Needless to say, I was disappointed.



The Day That Lied

Somewhere I lost a day
twenty-four hours went away
this I knew when I awoke
and the time had been revoked
fast-forward to the now
with whiplash in full effect
by a skip of in-between
in the realm of consciousness

tomorrow has been replaced
without remembering yesterday
the memory empty as a void
where the experiences were explored
those hours are now gone
stolen by the thief I’ll absolve
my mind was the fiend
leaving me now betrayed

I’ll continue to move forward
knowing tomorrows are one short
hoping the rest will arrive
and not repeat the day that lied.

© 2019. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20190211.

Without a Song


My life was incomplete
void of leadership
when I walk about
without a soundtrack

danger lurks far too close
creeping up with bad intent
here I stand with no cue
to escape the coming doom

my true love was at hand
the last romance I would have
if only I had tendered love
instead of nodding my dim head

anxiety gripped my beating heart
when no angst lay nearby
sadly I was ignorant
that relaxation was allowed

if only music was my guide
instructing how I should respond
to the world to which I'm blind
without a song as my guide

© 2018. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20180627.

I decided to document something something scandalous in my poem “Radical Honesty”. What is Radical Honesty? Radical Honesty is a kind of communication that is direct, complete, open and expressive. How did I do? Hmmm.


Radical Honesty

I’ll write a confession
scratch the words with a pen
declarations I’ll preface
with disclosure of what I mean

from the realm of privacy
once put to ears of the divine
clerics no longer bear witness
to the life I choose to share

honesty from the bleeding edge
these admissions may seem radical
I’ll lie no longer to protect
the image projected upon the world

perhaps I’ll apologize
penance for the thoughts I have
with these statements I’ll exit
reducing stress by contrition’s breath

© 2017. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20170627.

I knew a French psychic, named Marie-Claire Wilson, when lived in Atlanta in the mid 90s. Apparently she is still in the biz now, some twenty years later. One of the enduring tings about Marie-Claire was her pronouncement of a particular word with the synonyms of “appealing” and “charming”. The poem “I Was Queet” is based on her delightful pronouncement of that word.


I Was Queet

They said I was ‘queet’
I’d understand if you question
perhaps this is special pet name
between them and me?

It's not the meaning from the urban tome
dictionary of slang's common terms
while I'd not object to this other gist
it's not the meaning they had in mind.

The explanation stems from origins
'mon amour, le seul que je chéris'
I'll speak the words in my tounge
'my love, the only one I cherish'.

Look south from the British Isles
west of the Italian boot
straight from the town of lights
that blessed land across the sea.

Now here in my arms, countries forgot
they stated how they saw me
'mignonne' would be homeland word
which meant naught to me, though now I know.

Have you guessed my appeal to this special one
expressed in a word beyond lexicons?
this I know with all my brimming heart
they are also cute, oh so queet, in my eyes.

© 2017. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20170427.

The poem “Jesus Made Them Hot” was written for a contest that asked “write a poem mixing religious and secular images and all that jazz into one poem”. The contest host stated “this is your hall pass”. I’ll take them at their word!


Jesus Made Them Hot

They said that Jesus made them hot
with perfect love and perfect trust
wait that was my other lover
the Wiccan who worshiped in the buff

I asked my Christian why this was so
what qualities provoked the chemistry
they said look to the ancient truths
and then apply them between the silk sheets

first be faithful that bodies gush
when rapt attention is put forth
though unseen at the start
the end will come at long last

send the prayers to heavenly father
asking for aid in foreplay’s pleasure
off to a great start helps towards the end
any assistance is better than none

the blessed son was the most wise
quoting scripture to teach the lost ones
red letter text could be the last word
regarding the love of all fellow men

I’d humble myself to gifts of the flesh
on my bent knee I offered pleasure
yes ma’am, yes sir, what can I do
to solicit climax at the end of our play?

with patience I waited for apex’s peak
they asked to pace with due diligence
not rushing or racing to my own end
this is what he would want in the bed

lastly insisted on charity’s bliss
giving the all towards coital joy
to give and not take was the highest goal
put forth by their savior as bodies were pressed

I asked them how they came to my bed
they answer was simple: I was then led
to be with another with these attributes
I was as hot as Jesus was pure.

© 2017. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20170409.

The poem “Eternal Oktoberfest” is a tribute to uplifting spirit of polka music. It was inspired by an anonymous friend who keenly lifts my spirits.


Eternal Oktoberfest

When life is cast in darkest shades
Nine Inch Nails is the refrain
clothes are black and shoes are red
I search for comfort in polka's sway
where NPR provides my fix
mainlined music straight into my veins
polkamania is now my passion
cultural dance by the Yankovic.

Bohemian is the origin
gypsy maverick, ancient beatnik
name derived from Czech pulka
brought forward to the present
the beats are fast as metal's pulse
though less severe than acid rock
Motorhead may own the bangers
polka rules with off-beat accents.

Every country has their own
witness Brazil and Irish versions
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway
all are marked with Nordic labels
the accordion has oom-pah bellows
clarinets are the winds
trombones shine with brass
tubas bring the big boom-ba.

I no longer dress in black
red accents below the socks
I instead embrace the dirndls
with lederhosen on the thighs
my happiness now has no limits
polka in the primary colors
raise a beer while you hop
to life's eternal Oktoberfest.

© 2017, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20170207.

College Stripper Journals – Rule #5 (Vs. a Shave Is Nice)


There was a month that had Rusty laid low while he recovered from an appendectomy. He ended up with a cool scar that matched my own, much to the clients’ delights, but for that short time he was knocked out of working order. The practical distribution of labors prompted me to find a temporary partner from the other stripper groups. A very few of the groups had representation by both genders. They performed more specialized acts. Mind you, this was the Deep South in the 80s, so everything was pretty clean compared to what you see on the circuit today. You couldn’t ask for the Alpha-Pinto Stack back then! Know what I mean?

One of the groups was named “The Pats”, made up of Patricia and Patrick. Both went by the name Pat. They got a laugh out of that of course, referring to themselves as P1 and P2. It was easy to tell them apart because P2 had alopecia areata. What is this? The autoimmune disease causes hair loss, and in Pat’s case, it was across their entire body. Pat and I started working the clients. I’d do my thing and Pat would do theirs. About two weeks in we broke Rusty’s #5 rule: don’t fall for a co-worker, or as he was keen to quip, “don’t lay it where you shake it”.

The hours together, pushing ourselves hard to please the shared customer base, bonded Pat and myself in ways that Rusty and I never did. I think it started when I wanted to show my sympathy to Pat’s condition. While I did normally pursue the motto “shave it to show it”, it was quite different shaving head, legs, armpits, and so on. I couldn’t get some areas but Pat was nice enough to do the razor work in those hard-to-reach spots. It seemed like half our time was spent shaving my body, with the efforts equally distributed. These sessions seemed to take longer and longer, with Pat’s portion consuming the most time. I suspected something was up. Sure enough one fateful night Pat took my hand and rubbed it across their skin saying, “see, this is how it should feel”. One thing led to another, and rule #5 became a victim of the workplace.

At this point I’d expect a hand to do up and the question be thrust, “why did you shave your hair off?”. Yeah, sympathy goes a long way, but the college stripper scene was pretty professional as a whole. Good work ethics were learned there, with the Pat thing being the exception. My only excuse is that Pat was majored in media, specializing in advertising and promotions. They convinced me that the clients would tip that much better when we were matching, both hairless. Yeah, there were differences, like the eye color. One of us was taller also and one of us still had our tonsils. OK, the second isn’t readily apparent. I also wore glasses and Pat had contacts. Pat was right though. We were almost twins, but completely different because of the obvious, when we both lacked body hair.

The customers loved the novel nature of the temporary team. I got to show it all, plus some. Pat was up to their usual standards of display. My classwork was suffering even though the money rolled in. Pat took up so much of my time outside of the work hours. I can’t count how many times Pat would say “oh Brown Eyes (their pet name for me), let me check if you need to be shaved”. Between the sleep deprivation, struggling through Radar Theory, and wanting to keep on my clothes at some point outside of school hours, I was glad when Rusty returned home from his medical leave. About the same time the other Pat, who also had brown eyes, returned to the circuit. I then realized that Brown Eyes was not an exclusive pet name. C'est la vie. Blue Eyes (my pet name for Pat) returned to their protege and I to mine. The college stripping world restablished balance.

I learned some valuable lessons during my time as a hairless college stripper. The first was that hair itches like the dickens when it is growing back. Never gain. The second was that Rusty was the fount of wisdom, especially in regards to rule #5. There was that time that he and I broke rule #9, but that was with consenting adults and we only did it twice. At the end of the month I looked back with and thought, beware of the shave when five’s on the line.

College Stripper Journals – Golden Boys (All That Glitters)


Rusty’s affinity for effects sometimes got us in trouble, though at times one does suffer for their craft. I’ll be clear here. There is such a thing as artistic suffering and then there is a humiliation that calls a show short. More on that later, but first you should understand why Rusty went to these lengths to fully satisfy our clients.

The college stripping scene was opening up in the middle 80s. Consider the time. MTV was established with a flamboyant worldview available on the small screen. The astronaut on the moon had given way to a mix of music gravitating between the titillation of Queen to the over the top “fashions” of Headbangers Ball. George Michael had made it OK for guys to be sexy while Prince gave permission for sexual ambiguity. This sounds like peaches and cream, but remember that I was located in the Deep South. The biz was more open than veterans reported in their tales of past woe, but there was still incredible pressure to be incredibly discrete while going big, big, big.

Against this background, and before I reveal our humiliation, I want to put to rest a trope of stripping seen in the movies. The pressure felt on the college stripping scene pushed together teams of strippers. Rusty and I were one such duo. We were somewhere between Queen and Headbangers, leaning to Duckie in Pretty in Pink. Yeah, skinny white guys, no matter the equipment, did not have the visual impact of the muscled “chips”. No, not the guys with motorcycles in California, though Ponch and Jon would have made a good duo. We meant the over muscled dancers seemingly straight out of Chippendales male revue show. The local chips worked in smaller groups, usually no more than three, and mostly consisted of the jocks muscling in, pun intended, on the biz of hard-working amateurs. You have to find humor where you can, damn natural talent. Anyway, I’ve digressed.

My point is that most stripping events were performed by two or more dancers. Why was stripping performed by two or more, with two the optimal number for splitting the proceeds: distribution of labors! I was a few years past nineteen, the supposed height of my sexual drive. Rusty was a little further along given his collegiate career, but with advanced age comes knowledge. He explained life was all about polarities. Remember, he was the philosophical English major. “With the hard comes the soft, with the long comes the short”. My translation: there are good nights and bad nights. The distribution of labors increases the odds that somebody would be on their A game. Both of us is a golden night with many appreciative customers. One of us, well, it was still a good night. The problems developed when we were, in Rusty’s sage words, soft and short. This occurred one New Years Eve week.

We were both under the weather after a grueling week of prior engagements. We considered calling in a chip to help out, but Rusty, being the theatrical type, decided to try out a prop he had been holding back for just an occasion. He figured that it would dazzle the customers and perhaps cheer us onto the hard and long. He had gotten his hands some golden craft glitter. It almost looked like spice, but Rusty explained to me that it was the real thing ready for “the show”. I don’t want to bore you with particulars here given that I’m still vague on the long past incredibly embarrassing topic, but the craft glitter is plastic and not the higher grade polyester. It does not respond well to moisture as it tends to run and clump. With all of this precursor hinting of doom explained, Rusty and I broke out the golden powder for a show.

Before we got to the party we liberally applied the glitter with helping amounts of lube. Our costumes, fitting the time of the year, were Father Time and Baby New Year. Rusty, of course, was the former given his flowing beard. We had a whole “out with the old, in with the new” show planned. Yeah, dazzle them with effects if the plot isn’t fully there. We had to present. Disaster struck after I did my “I am here to relieve you of your place” line with Rusty proudly responding “does it look like I’m spent?”. The great “reveal” had our equipment looking like it was struck with sores placed there by a Midas touch. In addition to that, the golden color had rubbed off all over. It was a gilded horror show. The enthusiasm we had managed to collect in anticipation of the unveiling quickly vanished. I don’t want to share the humiliating attempt we made to recover from this, but suffice to say, the night ended early.

There was an upside. Every cloud has a metallic lining. The incredibly fine nature of the glitter made it very difficult to fully remove even with vigorous rubbing. That led to an interesting challenge for all involved, and several did try. For a few months, our folly made our names shine that much brighter on the stripping scene. The chips may have had their abs, but we had gone through the craft fires to come out brighter on the other side. Fame recouped our spirits and the team was fully at bat. All that glitters is not gold, but we lived it large as the Golden Boys for long enough.

College Stripper Journals – Truly Tease (The Beginning)


When people find out I was a stripper in college they have questions. Yes, I was a male dancer hired to “entertain”. The most forward queries lead to the shortest conversations, such as “do you still strip?”. I’m sure they mean it in jest, given that it’s been quite a few years since those days. It’s time to share, and the best place to start is at the beginning and not the end.

I prefer that we start the inquisition with how I began in the trade. It seems like yesterday even though it was twenty-five plus years ago. Funds were stretched and I had very little time on my hands in between studying for classes like radar theory and numerical analysis. The need to study ruled out typical part-time jobs of grocery bagging or fast-food “would you like fries with that burger?”. I’d tried my hand at immersive oil frying the summer prior to college and did not relish the return to the crispy battered burns. Besides, physics textbooks were difficult to juggle while cleaning grease out of fume hoods. My search for money to spend on something more than ramen noodles was answered by my buddy Rusty who never seemed to lack for a pocket change.

First, let me tell you about Rusty. He was a long lingering English major who should have graduated years before. The college had become the warm womb that my friend relished even while the rest of us wished to leave its embrace. He was tall, skinny, and had more facial hair than the average student. Was he handsome? Perhaps, but only in a Shaggy of Scooby Doo kind of way. We met through mutual friends and became fast buds. Rusty was my mentor and inspiration. I won’t claim to be his Scooby, but I definitely played second fiddle during my collegiate performing years. This rang true in several ways. While I was a little more buff, not by much mind you given I was coming off of years of running competitions, I was downright bulky compared to my friend. He was skinny with big hair, like Tommy Chong of Cheek & Chong. This didn’t matter. Rusty’s fame was the tool of the trade combined with words of wisdom that have rung down through the years. His maxims, jingles for the dancing gigolos, allowed me to prosper even as I wished I had more, down there.

His most memorable instructed me how to carry myself with decorum. This is a fancy word for working a crowd to pile up the tips. Here’s the scoop on the money. You didn’t get much up front and still don’t. The pockets are filled, well, when you have pockets available afterward, by the tipping of appreciative customers. Rusty had looked me over and told me that I had to fully embrace his rule #3, “tease to please”. He explained that it wasn’t about what I brought to the show. It was instead about how I used it during the show. “Imply everything, they create the story”. Well, that’s an English major for you. He explained it was like a paragraph: beginning sentence, the body of the paragraph, closing sentence. The audience handled the middle if I set the mood and road it to the ending, figuratively mind you.

“It’s all about the middle” he would say. That was easy for him to say, but his sage words about the framing of the happy trail ending were gold. “Shave it to show it, shake it to make it” became the outwardly manifesting mantra that I still embrace. When I got tired of the maintenance Rusty would exclaim “don’t hide it under a bush”. Too true! The shaking seemed so much more dramatic with an unobstructed view. The clear-cut was a good combination with my Paul Simon like baby-face. Rusty and I became a compare and contrast duo with something for everyone. I was the bouncy bunny to Rusty’s steady stallion. Not surprisingly this led to my stage name, a persistent shadow that is never shaken no matter how much you do.

I can’t give out Rusty’s stage name. He’s still working the senior circuit. My nickname came from my “making it” motions. I had always been a fan of the movie Bambi, and in particular, its sassy little rabbit. It didn’t take me long to decide to use Thumper, or more often, “Lil’ Thumper” when compared to my partner in crime. To each, their own name, to each their tools. I made the most of the situation, often second fiddle, but somebody’s got to be on the bottom and somebody’s got to be on top.

That’s how I got my start, a few words about my inspiring partner, and a bit about my modus operandi, long for the short of “how I strutted it”. Rusty and I had some good times, made a few bucks, and those years launched me into a realm beyond the bright lights of the conventional world. Ramen noodles were left behind while I discovered how to truly tease.

The poem “One Time at Band Camp” was inspired by a series of scenes in the 1999 movie “American Pie”.


One Time at Band Camp

And one time at band camp
the flute was my tool
just as these words
fill your head full
with pillow fights
lost music sheets
playing forever
thinking of Bach
whenever I’m bored
so much time to spend
it’s half what I learn
education at hand
to fluting the reed
finding the base
getting myself out
when antsy feels
I just want to bang
the cymbals together
this one time at band camp
are we going to screw?

2016, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved, 20161003.