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 Степанов – Лисички
- Hands by Russell Edson
- Николай Языков – П. Н. Шепелеву (Ты мой приятель задушевной)
- Epitaph on John Rankine by Robert Burns
- To a Lady with an Unruly and Ill-mannered Dog Who Bit several Persons of Importance by Sir Walter Raleigh
- Владимир Костров – 1380 год
- Sonnet CVI by William Shakespeare
- Shot? So Quick, So Clean an Ending? poem – A. E. Housman
- Remorse For Intemperate Speech by William Butler Yeats
- Fragment Of “The Castle Builder.” poem – John Keats poems
- 600 Kilos of Muscle and Bone by Rose Mary Boehm
- Farewell
- Pay your last respects by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Владимир Маяковский – Славянский вопрос-то решается просто
- On Passing The New Menin Gate by Siegfried Sassoon
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
- Notes for Canto CXX poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Nicotine poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Meditatio poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Medallion poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Masks poem – Ezra Pound poems
- L’Art poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Lament of the Frontier Guard poem – Ezra Pound poems
- La Regina Avrillouse poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Ione, Dead the Long Year poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Invern poem – Ezra Pound poems
- In the Old Age of the Soul poem – Ezra Pound poems
- In Tempore Senectutis poem – Ezra Pound poems
- In A Station Of The Metro poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I) poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Historion poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Grace Before Song poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Further Instructions poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Francesca poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Fan-Piece, For Her Imperial Lord poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Ezra on the Strike poem – Ezra Pound poems
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
