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:
- Sonnet 3: Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest by William Shakespeare
- The Street Sounds to the Soldiers’ Tread poem – A. E. Housman
- Lines of John M’Murdo by Robert Burns
- An Ode in Time of Hesitation by William Vaughn Moody
- A beach dawn by Sunil Sharma
- Ольга Берггольц – Знаю, чем меня пленила
- Ah! Sun-Flower by William Blake
- A Requisition to the Queen by William Topaz McGonagall
- Lincoln by Vachel Lindsay
- Жан де Лафонтен – Ссора Собак с Кошками и Кошек с Мышами
- The Thin People by Sylvia Plath
- In The Stone I Rooted
- The Teak Forest
- Hope Holds to Christ poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Эмиль Верхарн – Воскресное утро
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
- Merging, Emerging by Shahida Latif
- Men by Maya Angelou
- Little Clock by T. Wignesan
- Let me Count the Poets Left by Michael K. Shiu
- Last Turn Of The Morning Carousel/Forever Turn The Midnight Carousel by Matthew Abuelo
- kaleidoscopic whorled wide web. by matthew scott harris
- Kailangan ko’y Yakap by Melissa Sazon Flores
- It Asked a Crumb of Me by Michael K. Shiu
- Insomniac by Maya Angelou
- initial mother’s day eve by matthew scott harris
- In the Park by Maxine Kumin
- Illusion by Mercedes Madrigal
- I Know From my Bed by Michael Lee Johnson
- Humankind – How Limitless In Genius by Michael Levy
- How Am I? by Matt Bohart
- Haunted by you by Melissa Skelton
- Forced by Mayank Sharma
- Forbidden Fruit by Michael Lally
- Follies of War by Michael Levy
- Eve- Song by Mary Gilmore
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
