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 – Простая песня, грусть простая
- Limitations by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth
- To Independence by Tobias Smollett
- A Clear Day And No Memories by Wallace Stevens
- Five Songs – II by W H Auden
- Antediluvian Kural On Twitter
- To Sleep by William Wordsworth
- Вера Павлова – Они влюблены и счастливы
- Quicksand Years. by Walt Whitman
- The Room by Mark Strand
- Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling
- Kumarakom (after the boat tragedy) by Shreekumar Varma
- Rhyme by Sylvia Plath
- The Tree of Scarlet Berries poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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
- Яков Полонский – Одному из усталых
- Яков Полонский – Ночная дума
- Яков Полонский – Ночь в Крыму
- Яков Полонский – Ночь на восточном берегу Черного моря
- Яков Полонский – Нищий
- Яков Полонский – Неотвязная
- Яков Полонский – Не жди
- Яков Полонский – Наплывает туча с моря
- Яков Полонский – На Женевском озере
- Яков Полонский – На закате
- Яков Полонский – На пути
- Яков Полонский – На искусе
- Яков Полонский – Н. А. Грибоедова
- Юлий Даниэль – Друзьям
- Юлий Даниэль – Дом
- Юлий Даниэль – Часовой
- Юлий Даниэль – Ах, недостреляли, недобили
- Юлий Даниэль – А в это время
- Юлиан Анисимов – Весенний дождь
- Юлиан Анисимов – Стихи мои, нежные гости
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
