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:
- New Land
- To His Dead Body by Siegfried Sassoon
- Шекспир – По совести скажи – Сонет 10
- Set me FREE by Neelam Sinha
- Олег Сердобольский – Корова и божья коровка
- SOMALIA CALLING by Satish Verma
- Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
- Comments: How to Write a Critical Appreciation of a Poem
- Robert Burns: To Daunton Me:
- Arrival by William Carlos Williams
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Маша
- Ольга Берггольц – О, наверное, он не вернётся
- Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman
- Song—Farewell to the Banks of Ayr by Robert Burns
- Composed By The Side Of Grasmere Lake 1806 by William Wordsworth
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
- The Gardener XIX: You Walked by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener XIV: I Was Walking by the Road by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener XIII: I Asked Nothing by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener X: Let Your Work Be, Bride by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXXIV: Over the Green by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXXI: Why Do You Whisper So Faintly by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXVI: The Fair Was On by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXV: At Midnight by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXVIII: None Lives For Ever, Brother by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXIX: I Hunt for the Golden Stag by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXIV: I Spent My Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LIX: O Woman by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LI: Then Finish the Last Song by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener IX: When I Go Alone at Night by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener IV: Ah Me by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Further Bank by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Flower-School by Rabindranath Tagore
- The First Jasmines by Rabindranath Tagore
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
