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:
- Олег Бундур – Как папа прогуливал школу
- At First. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier
- Mother and Babe. by Walt Whitman
- Ольга Высотская – Детский сад
- Николай Глазков – Чтоб улыбалось счастье
- Sonnet 16: But wherefore do not you a mightier way by William Shakespeare
- everything is a lie by tulip
- Николай Заболоцкий – На лестницах
- Everlasting Wander by Rixa White
- The Song of the Borderguard by Robert Duncan
- On Flaxman’s Penelope by William Cowper
- Auguries Of Innocence by William Blake
- A Defence Of English Spring poem – Alfred Austin
- Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats’s poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Маяковский – Не эти правильно Октябрь празднуют… (РОСТА №398)
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
- Closed Path by Rabindranath Tagore
- Chain Of Pearls by Rabindranath Tagore
- Brink Of Eternity by Rabindranath Tagore
- Benediction by Rabindranath Tagore
- Beggarly Heart by Rabindranath Tagore
- Baby’s World by Rabindranath Tagore
- Baby’s Way by Rabindranath Tagore
- Authorship by Rabindranath Tagore
- A Moments Indulgence by Rabindranath Tagore
- Who Is This? by Rabindranath Tagore
- Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore
- When The Two Sisters Go To Fetch Water by Rabindranath Tagore
- When I Go Alone At Night by Rabindranath Tagore
- When I Go Alone At Night by Rabindranath Tagore
- We Are To Play The Game Of Death by Rabindranath Tagore
- We Are To Play The Game Of Death by Rabindranath Tagore
- Waiting by Rabindranath Tagore
- Waiting For The Beloved — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Tumi Sandhyar Meghamala – You Are A Cluster Of Clouds – Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- This Dog 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
