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:
- Quarrel In Old Age by William Butler Yeats
- Gravity Suspended
- Николай Гумилев – Мадагаскар
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 99. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Bringen Woone Gwaïn O’ Zundays by William Barnes
- Николай Карамзин – Из письма к И. И. Дмитриеву (Что ж может быть любви и счастия быстрее)
- Angels by Russell Edson
- Poetry by Marianne Moore
- In the Waters of Purity by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- The Goldsmith by Siegfried Sassoon
- Refrigerator, 1957 by Thomas Lux
- Владимир Высоцкий – Случай
- The Leader by Roger McGough
- Rubber Souls poem – Andrei Voznesensky poems
- Fairy Land iv by William Shakespeare
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 Poetic Principle by Mark Olynyk
- She and Drugs by Mark R Slaughter
- The Other Side of Panic by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Sculpture of Debris on the Waterfront by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Question mark remarks by Mark Miller
- The joyful things in life by Martin Smith
- The Frantic by Mark Miller
- Postures by Martina Reisz Newberry
- The End of the Argument by Martina Reisz Newberry
- My Father’s Hats by Mark Irwin
- The Dreadful Has Already Happened by Mark Strand
- The Dragon and The Unicorn by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Please Don’t Judas Me by Mark Miller
- Never Sure Which You Are by Mary Etta Metcalf
- The Last Wolf by Mary TallMountain
- Nestling by Mark R Slaughter
- The Homeless Man by Mary TallMountain
- My Words Embrace by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Telescope by Mark R Slaughter
- My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer by Mark Strand
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
