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:
- Patience, Hard Thing! The Hard Thing But To Pray poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Love Gregor; Or, The Lass Of Lochroyan poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Fair Elanor by William Blake
- Жан де Лафонтен – Дафнис и Алцимадура
- Unsaid by Victoria Bukofske
- Ольга Берггольц – Два стихотворения дочерям
- Нина Гаген-Торн – Колыма
- houses.html
- Владимир Маяковский – О том, как у Керзона с обедом разрасталась аппетитов зона
- Владимир Корнилов – Платформа 126-го км
- Sonnet II: Not At First Sight by Sir Philip Sidney
- English Poetry. Thomas Moore. From “Irish Melodies”. 91. Oh, Ye Dead!. Томас Мур.
- Epitaph for Mr. William Michie, Schoolmaster by Robert Burns
- A Riddle by William Cowper
- INTO THE LAIR by Satish Verma
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
- In Praise Of England poem – Alfred Austin
- Impromptu: To Frances Garnet Wolseley poem – Alfred Austin
- If I To You But Sorry Bring poem – Alfred Austin
- I Chide Not At The Seasons poem – Alfred Austin
- Hymn To Death poem – Alfred Austin
- Grandmother’s Teaching poem – Alfred Austin
- Gleaners Of Fame poem – Alfred Austin
- Farewell To Spring poem – Alfred Austin
- The Golden Age poem – Alfred Austin
- “The flower, full blown, now bends the stalk, now breaks” poem – Alfred Austin
- The Fallen Elm poem – Alfred Austin
- The Evening Light poem – Alfred Austin
- The Dregs Of Love poem – Alfred Austin
- The Door Of Humility poem – Alfred Austin
- The Death Of Huss poem – Alfred Austin
- The Dance At Darmstadt poem – Alfred Austin
- The Challenge Answered poem – Alfred Austin
- The Aquittal Of Phryne poem – Alfred Austin
- “Take not the Gods to task, for they are wise” poem – Alfred Austin
- Sweet Love Is Dead poem – Alfred Austin
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