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:
- Decision
- Sonnet LXXI by William Shakespeare
- Mother
- Sonet 44 by William Alexander
- Halloween by Robert Burns
- Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling. by Walt Whitman
- Miss Worthington by Rose Mary Boehm
- Moonless darkness stands between poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Анатолий Жигулин – Гулко эхо от ранних шагов
- Faces. by Walt Whitman
- Hurrahing In Harvest poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Юнна Мориц – Не вспоминай меня
- At The Gate Of A Hospital by Shahida Latif
- The Return by Sara Teasdale
- The Heart’s House by Sara Teasdale
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
- Slant by Stephen Dunn
- Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn
- Named by Stephen Dunn
- Landscape At The End Of The Century by Stephen Dunn
- I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone by Stephen Dunn
- Essay On The Personal by Stephen Dunn
- Biography In The First Person by Stephen Dunn
- At The Smithville Methodist Church by Stephen Dunn
- Allegory Of The Cave by Stephen Dunn
- The White Peacock by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Quality of Courage by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Innovator by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Hemp by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The General Public by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Fiddling Wood by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The City Revisited by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Breaking Point by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Talk by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Road and Hills by Stephen Vincent Benet
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
