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 Маяковский – Да здравствует III интернационал! (РОСТА № 140)
- Darest Thou Now, O Soul. by Walt Whitman
- Ready for Retirement by Mike Yuan
- Николай Гумилев – Ольге Людвиговне Кардовской
- Composed on The Eve Of The Marriage Of A Friend In The Vale Of Grasmere by William Wordsworth
- Night by William Morris
- Locked Out by Robert Frost
- World’s Sweetest Sister Of Mine by Miraj Patel
- What Is Woman But A Song! by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- I was born with a cry by Nur Al-Alam
- София Парнок – Кипящий звук неторопливых арб
- Woman by Manmohan Acharya
- Address To The Scholars Of The Village School Of — by William Wordsworth
- To-Morrow To Fresh Woods And Pastures New poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Untitled XXIX by Yunus Emre
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
- Daybreak In A Garden by Siegfried Sassoon
- David Cleek by Siegfried Sassoon
- Counter-Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
- Conscripts by Siegfried Sassoon
- Concert Party by Siegfried Sassoon
- Companions by Siegfried Sassoon
- Butterflies by Siegfried Sassoon
- Break of Day by Siegfried Sassoon
- Bombardment by Siegfried Sassoon
- Blind by Siegfried Sassoon
- Blighters by Siegfried Sassoon
- Before the Battle by Siegfried Sassoon
- Before Day by Siegfried Sassoon
- Battalion-Relief by Siegfried Sassoon
- Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon
- Banishment by Siegfried Sassoon
- Autumn by Siegfried Sassoon
- Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
- At Daybreak by Siegfried Sassoon
- At Carnoy by Siegfried Sassoon
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
