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:
- An Answer To A Copy Of Verses Sent Me To Jersey
- To Homer poem – John Keats poems
- Do You Remember Once
- Bringen Woone Gwaïn O’ Zundays by William Barnes
- Анатолий Жигулин – Цветы сажают в торф
- A Quick Ode to Spam, a Poem about Spam
- Sleep by Russell Edson
- Rogue Elephant poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
- Николай Глазков – Что ни год, идёт вперёд
- Вера Полозкова – Да что у меня, нормально всё, так, условно
- Зинаида Александрова – У моря
- Homer’s Seeing-Eye Dog by William Matthews
- Influence of Natural Objects by William Wordsworth
- Гавриил Державин – Афинейскому витязю
- Calais, August 15, 1802 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
- At the Galleria Shopping Mall by Tony Hoagland
- America by Tony Hoagland
- A Color of the Sky by Tony Hoagland
- To His Mistress In Absence by Torquato Tasso
- “What weeping, or what dewfall,” by Torquato Tasso
- “Once we were happy” by Torquato Tasso
- “O you, far colder, whiter” by Torquato Tasso
- “Life of my life, you seem to me” by Torquato Tasso
- “Hedge, that divides the lovely” by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 07 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 06 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 05 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 03 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 02 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 04 – part 04 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 04 – part 03 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 04 – part 01 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 03 – part 05 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 03 – part 04 by Torquato Tasso
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 03 – part 03 by Torquato Tasso
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
