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:
- Василий Курочкин – Раздумье
- Friday’s Child by W H Auden
- Poem Stories
- English Poetry. Thomas Moore. From “Irish Melodies”. 103. The Mountain Spite. Томас Мур.
- The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
- Юлий Даниэль – Дом
- The (REAL) Tale of the Tortoise and the Hare by Ross D Tyler
- The Wheel by William Butler Yeats
- Fragment of Song—The Night was Still by Robert Burns
- The Light By The Barn by William Stafford
- Brought From Beyond poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Robert Burns: Phillis The Fair:
- Владимир Британишский – У этой матери кормящей
- Владимир Степанов – Неваляшка (Буква Н)
- Жан де Лафонтен – Совет Мышей
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
- Suicide Off Egg Rock by Sylvia Plath
- Stars Over The Dordogne by Sylvia Plath
- A Sorcerer Bids Farewell To Seem by Sylvia Plath
- Sonnet: To Time by Sylvia Plath
- Sonnet To Satan by Sylvia Plath
- Sonnet : To Eva by Sylvia Plath
- Song For A Summer’s Day by Sylvia Plath
- Song For A Revolutionary Love by Sylvia Plath
- Soliloquy Of The Solipsist by Sylvia Plath
- Sleep In The Mojave Desert by Sylvia Plath
- Sheep In Fog by Sylvia Plath
- Prologue To Spring by Sylvia Plath
- Poppies In October by Sylvia Plath
- Poppies In July by Sylvia Plath
- Polly’s Tree by Sylvia Plath
- On The Plethora Of Dryads by Sylvia Plath
- On The Difficulty Of Conjuring Up A Dryad by Sylvia Plath
- On The Decline Of Oracles by Sylvia Plath
- On Looking Into The Eyes Of A Demon Lover by Sylvia Plath
- On Deck by Sylvia Plath
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
