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:
- Владимир Набоков – Цветет миндаль на перекрестке
- Up The Line by Will McKendree Carleton
- Nocturne by W H Auden
- Memory poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- In Plaster by Sylvia Plath
- Олег Бундур – Сон
- I Hear America Singing. by Walt Whitman
- English Poetry. Francis Turner Palgrave. A Churchyard in Oxfordshire. Фрэнсис Тернер Палгрев.
- Владимир Маяковский – Все давайте советской республике, все получите от советской республики (РОСТА № 293)
- Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour. by Walt Whitman
- A Teenage Pregnancy
- On the Idle Hill of Summer poem – A. E. Housman
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Цветок
- Жан де Лафонтен – Карман
- Владимир Высоцкий – У Доски, где почётные граждане
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
- The Country Of Marriage by Wendell Berry
- Testament by Wendell Berry
- Sabbaths 2001 by Wendell Berry
- Ripening by Wendell Berry
- A Warning To My Readers by Wendell Berry
- Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry
- Like The Water by Wendell Berry
- In this World by Wendell Berry
- In A Motel Parking Lot, Thinking Of Dr. Williams by Wendell Berry
- For The Future by Wendell Berry
- Do not be ashamed by Wendell Berry
- A Meeting by Wendell Berry
- 1991-II by Wendell Berry
- 1991-I by Wendell Berry
- A Terre (being the philosophy of many soldiers) by Wilfred Owen
- Disabled by Wilfred Owen
- Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
- Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
- Conscious by Wilfred Owen
- Insensibility by Wilfred Owen
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
