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:
- The missing pen by Ross D Tyler
- Валерий Брюсов – Исполненное обещание романтическая поэма
- Gathering Leaves by Robert Frost
- November 1968
- Before by Robert Browning
- Владимир Маяковский – За 10 месяцев 1920 года… (РОСТА №748)
- Twelve Months After by Siegfried Sassoon
- Robert Burns: Election Ballad: At the close of the contest for representing the Dumfries Burghs, 1790. Addressed to R. Graham, Esq. of Fintry.
- Владимир Маяковский – Эй, товарищ! Если ты пришел на Сухаревку… (РОСТА №262)
- Death In Exile by Satish Verma
- The Moon And The Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath
- ‘Tis Said, That Some Have Died For Love by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Вишневский – Звучит воинственно: “носки”
- Oh Day Of Fire And Sun by Sara Teasdale
- Ballades III – Of Blue China poem – Andrew Lang poems
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
- Autumn – The Third Pastoral, or Hylas and Ægon poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- To the Author of a Poem Entitled Succession poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Argus poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1 poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- An Essay On Criticism poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- An Essay on Man: Epistle II poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Yours & Mine poem – Alice Fulton poems | Poetry Monster
- Wibble Wobble poem – Alexander E Musset poems | Poetry Monster
- Why?
- Where Are You?
- Terrible Ted poem – Alexander E. Musset poems | Poetry Monster
- Tell Me
- Teacher
- Sleep
- Roar Shack poem – Alice Fulton poems | Poetry Monster
- Alexander E. Musset
- Our Soul’s Gestation
- Intruder
- Inside/Outside The Window
- Industrial Lace poem – Alice Fulton poems | Poetry Monster
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