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 36: Let me confess that we two must be twain by William Shakespeare
- Владислав Крапивин – Рыжий конь
- Off Mesolongi poem – Alfred Austin
- The Masks of Love
- Михаил Лермонтов – Желанье
- Astrophel and Stella: XX by Sir Philip Sidney
- The Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon
- On Glenriddell’s Fox breaking his chain: A Fragment by Robert Burns
- Looking Fire
- Владимир Маяковский – Дела вузные, хорошие и конфузные
- Robert Burns: Extempore Reply To An Invitation:
- The Death Of A Fly by Russell Edson
- Владимир Набоков – Воскресение мёртвых
- The Silent Lover ii by Sir Walter Raleigh
- Lover’s Gifts XXVIII: I Dreamt by Rabindranath Tagore
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
- Resolution And Independence by William Wordsworth
- Repentance by William Wordsworth
- Remembrance Of by William Wordsworth
- Power Of Music by William Wordsworth
- Picture of Daniel in the Lion’s Den at Hamilton Palace by William Wordsworth
- Personal Talk by William Wordsworth
- On The Same Occasion by William Wordsworth
- On The Final Submission Of The Tyrolese by William Wordsworth
- On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic by William Wordsworth
- On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford by William Wordsworth
- On A Celebrated Event In Ancient History by William Wordsworth
- O’erweening Statesmen Have Full Long Relied by William Wordsworth
- O’er The Wide Earth, On Mountain And On Plain by William Wordsworth
- Ode by William Wordsworth
- Ode To Lycoris. May 1817 by William Wordsworth
- Ode to Duty by William Wordsworth
- Ode Composed On A May Morning by William Wordsworth
- October, 1803 by William Wordsworth
- Occasioned By The Battle Of Waterloo February 1816 by William Wordsworth
- O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art by William Wordsworth
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
