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:
- From The North by Sara Teasdale
- Lessons. by Walt Whitman
- as_with_recitation_and_the_loss_of_a_kuhi.html
- Низами Гянджеви – Месяц неполный прошел
- The Senses of Art poem – Ygor Noblott poems | Poetry Monster
- Омар Хайям – Египет, Рим, Китай держи ты под пятой
- Psalm 05 poem – John Milton poems
- Joy-Bells by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Elphin Nourrice poem – Andrew Lang poems
- The Death Of Myth-Making by Sylvia Plath
- Константин Батюшков – Мои пенаты
- Иван Мятлев – Бывало
- Book Ends by Tony Harrison
- Death Stands Above Me, Whispering Low by Walter Savage Landor
- On The High Pedestal by Shahida Latif
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
- To Sea by Martin Zakovski
- To Dorothy by Marvin Bell
- The Dreadful Has Already Happened by Mark Strand
- The Dragon and The Unicorn by Mary Etta Metcalf
- They Thought Her Crazy by Mary Etta Metcalf
- These Green-Going-to-Yellow by Marvin Bell
- The Last Wolf by Mary TallMountain
- The Homeless Man by Mary TallMountain
- The Story Of Our Lives by Mark Strand
- Telescope by Mark R Slaughter
- The Self and the Mulberry by Marvin Bell
- Sunflowers by Martin Willitts Jr.
- The Room by Mark Strand
- Speaking the Language of Deer by Martin Willitts Jr.
- The River Has Its Memories by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Some Say by Mark Miller
- The River by Mark Olynyk
- So You Say by Mark Strand
- Slag by Mark Base
- The Remains by Mark Strand
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
