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:
- Владимир Корнилов – Боль
- A Riddle: On A Kiss by William Strode
- The Regret Of The Ranee In The Hall Of Peacocks
- Кариночка, любимая ты наша
- Игорь Северянин – Симфония
- Lovers on Aran by Seamus Heaney
- Sonnet 07
- No Rival Like The Past
- The Wanderer
- Wisdom in Love by Lutfi Abdallah a.k.a Laso
- Николай Языков – Песни (Счастлив, кому судьбою дан)
- Михаил Кузмин – Увы, любви своей не скрою
- Ок Мельникова – Hey jude
- Poor Mailie’s Elegy by Robert Burns
- The Ivy by William Barnes
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
- Forty Years Later by Martin Willitts, Jr
- Life by Marvin Bell
- Farmers Market by Mary TallMountain
- Let Him Free by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Eternal Existence by Mark Miller
- Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand
- Et Le Marbre Creuse… by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- Important thing’s in life by Martin Smith
- Images by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Illusions by Mark R Slaughter
- If Only by Mary Etta Metcalf
- I, or Someone Like Me by Marvin Bell
- He Said To by Marvin Bell
- Grumpy Old Man by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Giving Myself Up by Mark Strand
- Ghosts by Martina Reisz Newberry
- From The Long Sad Party by Mark Strand
- Forty Years Later by Martin Willitts, Jr
- Farmers Market by Mary TallMountain
- Eternal Existence by Mark Miller
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
