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:
- Robert Burns: When She Cam’ Ben She Bobbed :
- Muttering by Satish Verma
- Night by William Morris
- He Has Lived In Many Houses by Thomas Lux
- Lover’s Gifts LIV: In the Beginning of Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- Passing Time by Maya Angelou
- Владимир Британишский – У этой матери кормящей
- Ballad on Mr. Heron’s Election—No. 3 by Robert Burns
- Вероника Тушнова – В чем отказала я тебе
- Hug O’War by Shel Silverstein
- Farmer’s Son by William Barnes
- A Ballad of Footmen poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Николай Гумилев – Лесной пожар
- Ode to the Memory of Burns by Thomas Campbell
- Валерий Брюсов – Искушение
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
- Vorticism Is A Choka In Its Modular Home
- Violets Beauty Passing
- Victor
- Untitled
- Traveling
- Tracks In The Private Country
- Thoughts Religious Content
- The World
- The Sacred Tree
- The Poet And Imagination
- The Holy Tree
- The Emigrant
- Tears
- Simple Heart
- Silence
- She
- Sealed Appropriate
- Seal
- Sea Salt A Villanelle
- Salamis Quot
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
