Because life’s too short to blush,
I keep my blood tucked in.
I won’t be mortified
by what I drive or the flaccid
vivacity of my last dinner party.
I take my cue from statues posing only
in their shoulder pads of snow: all January
you can see them working on their granite tans.
That I woke at an ungainly hour,
stripped of the merchandise that clothed me,
distilled to pure suchness,
means not enough to anyone for me
to confess. I do not suffer
from the excess of taste
that spells embarrassment:
mothers who find their kids unseemly
in their condom earrings,
girls cringing to think
they could be frumpish as their mothers.
Though the late nonerotic Elvis
in his studded gut of jumpsuit
made everybody squeamish, I admit.
Rule one: the King must not elicit pity.
Was the audience afraid of being tainted
–this might rub off on me–
or were they–surrendering–
what a femme word–feeling
solicitous–glimpsing their fragility
in his reversible purples
and unwholesome goldish chains?
At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It’s intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise.
Copyright ©:
Alice Fulton
A few random poems:
- Mother
- To You. by Walt Whitman
- Николай Глазков – Дремота обрела права
- On Presenting to a Lady a White Rose and a Red on the Tenth of June by William Somervile
- A Supplication
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Липы
- Farewell (II) by Wang Wei
- The Priestess of Panormita poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- March Evening poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Beside The Idle Summer Sea by William Ernest Henley
- A Journey Through The Moonlight by Russell Edson
- Main to piya say naina lada aayi ray poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- My impure god and I by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- Till I Wake
- Loitering with a Vacant Eye poem – A. E. Housman
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Westward on the High-Hilled Plains poem – A. E. Housman
- Wake Not for the World-Heard Thunder poem – A. E. Housman
- Tis Time, I Think, By Wenlock Town poem – A. E. Housman
- Tis Time, I Think, By Wenlock Town poem – A. E. Housman
- Think No More, Lad poem – A. E. Housman
- Think No More, Lad poem – A. E. Housman
- There Pass the Careless People poem – A. E. Housman
- There Pass the Careless People poem – A. E. Housman
- The Winds Out of the West Land Blow poem – A. E. Housman
- The Winds Out of the West Land Blow poem – A. E. Housman
- The Welsh Marches poem – A. E. Housman
- The Welsh Marches poem – A. E. Housman
- The True Lover poem – A. E. Housman
- The Street Sounds to the Soldiers’ Tread poem – A. E. Housman
- The Stinging Nettle poem – A. E. Housman
- The Stinging Nettle poem – A. E. Housman
- The Recruit poem – A. E. Housman
- The Recruit poem – A. E. Housman
- The rainy Pleiads wester poem – A. E. Housman
- The rainy Pleiads wester poem – A. E. Housman
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
