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:
- Best Society by Philip Larkin
- In a Sombre Mood by Satish Verma
- Testing The Bomb by Shel Silverstein
- Church And State by William Butler Yeats
- Far Pitched Tents: Poems of War by Michael Nikoletseas
- Владимир Орлов – Ночной листок
- Storm and Sunlight by Siegfried Sassoon
- Жан де Лафонтен – Совет Мышей
- I Went Down into the Desert by Vachel Lindsay
- Impromtu On Ogareva poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Clemente’s Images by Robert Creeley
- The Garden poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Robert Burns: The Auld Farmer’s New-Year-Morning Salutation To His Auld Mare, Maggie: On giving her the accustomed ripp of corn to hansel in the New Year.
- The Idle Shepherd Boys by William Wordsworth
- All The Dead Dears by Sylvia Plath
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
- On The Tomb Of A Priestess Of Artemis by Sappho
- To One who Loved not Poetry by Sappho
- To One False In Love by Sappho
- To Aphrodite by Sappho
- To A Girl In A Garden by Sappho
- Before They Were Mothers by Sappho
- The Torments Of Love by Sappho
- The Silver Moon by Sappho
- The Death Of Adonis by Sappho
- Like The Sweet Apple by Sappho
- In the spring twilight by Sappho
- The Silver Moon by Sappho
- Sappho To Her Girlfriends by Sappho
- To One who Loved not Poetry by Sappho
- On The Tomb Of A Priestess Of Artemis by Sappho
- Of course I love you by Sappho
- Ode To A Loved One by Sappho
- My Garden by Sappho
- Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel by Sappho
- Loneliness by Sappho
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
