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:
- Fate poem – Andrei Voznesensky poems
- Михаил Лермонтов – Я счастлив, тайный яд течёт в моей крови
- New York’s Bad Dream by Matthew Abuelo
- For All We Have And Are by Rudyard Kipling
- The Gardener XXVIII: Your Questioning Eyes by Rabindranath Tagore
- A VOW TO VENUS by Robert Herrick
- Анатолий Жигулин – Лисенок
- Esteem for Chloris by Robert Burns
- Fast Anchor’d, Eternal, O Love. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песня Лягушонка
- Tonight she remembers by Rita Odessa Villaruel
- Song At Capri by Sara Teasdale
- Love’s Blindness poem – Alfred Austin
- Sonnet 86: Was it the proud full sail of his great verse by William Shakespeare
- Special Problems in Vocabulary by Tony Hoagland
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
- Иннокентий Анненский – Любовь к прошлому
- Иннокентий Анненский – Листы
- Иннокентий Анненский – Леконт де Лиль. Явление божества
- Иннокентий Анненский – Леконт де Лиль. Пускай избитый зверь, влачася на цепочке
- Иннокентий Анненский – Леконт де Лиль. Огненная жертва
- Иннокентий Анненский – Леконт де Лиль. Негибнущий аромат
- Иннокентий Анненский – Леконт де Лиль. Над синим мраком ночи длинной
- Иннокентий Анненский – Леконт де Лиль. Из стихотворения «Призраки»
- Иннокентий Анненский – Лаодамия (лирическая трагедия в 4 действиях с музыкальными антрактами)
- Иннокентий Анненский – Из участковых монологов
- Иннокентий Анненский – Из окна
- Иннокентий Анненский – Идеал
- Иннокентий Анненский – Гораций
- Иннокентий Анненский – Гармония
- Иннокентий Анненский – Франсис Жамм. Когда для всех меня не станет меж живыми
- Иннокентий Анненский – Еврипид. Вакханки (перевод)
- Иннокентий Анненский – Еврипид. Троянки (перевод)
- Иннокентий Анненский – Еврипид. Орест (перевод)
- Иннокентий Анненский – Еврипид. Киклоп драма сатиров (перевод)
- Иннокентий Анненский – Еврипид. Ион (перевод)
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
