Explanation: I pass Camelot East a lot on the way home. For those of you who don’t know, Camelot East is a dive of a strip club in back of a Sir Pizza off Richmond Road in Lexington. It rests in a cubby of asphalt back there near a storage facility, just secluded enough to encourage the occasional gunshot or parking lot scuffle. A few years ago, mourning the un-asked-for spiritual ass-beating a friend of mine was suffering, I had a sudden inspiration while passing Camelot East, so I pulled over, thumbed it out on my phone, and texted it to her. I think she liked it. That was the beginning of the Camelot East series. With apologies to Yeats and his brilliant “Crazy Jane” poems, come with me to Camelot.

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Camelot East: Aphrodite’s Gauntlet

Camelot, of the East variety,
Picked a fight with Aphrodite:

“We’ll speak it true, with this our aim:
To prove our lust whole, and render yours lame.

The Truth is thus, consider it well:
That men would rather walk through hell

Than pour o’er books of density
To learn of thy propensity

To slip their grasp just ere they find
That spasming nirvana of body and mind.

Yet ever they’ll traipse through our gilded front door,
Full of expectations of writhings and more.

And out into the dark, frustrated, we’ll send ’em
Home — to kick down fences or mend ’em.

And still, they’ll scurry back here in throngs,
To refuel on titties and beer and song.”