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 Internet Romance
- A Hedge Of Rubber Trees poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Columns by Rudyard Kipling
- Poem (The lump of coal my parents teased) by William Matthews
- Aunt Helen by T. S. Eliot
- Australia
- Олег Бундур – Семейный совет
- Song Of Khan Zada
- Николай Гумилев – Маргарита
- Innermost One by Rabindranath Tagore
- Огюст Барбье – Лев
- The Song For Colin by Sara Teasdale
- Михаил Лермонтов – Беглец
- Sonnet 142: Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 01 poem – John Milton 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
- No, Love Is Not Dead by Robert Desnos
- Lying Down by Robert Desnos
- Long Long Ago by Robert Desnos
- If You Only Knew by Robert Desnos
- Identity of Images by Robert Desnos
- Fairy Tale by Robert Desnos
- Zero by Robert Creeley
- Water Music by Robert Creeley
- The Way by Robert Creeley
- The Warning by Robert Creeley
- The Rain by Robert Creeley
- The Mirror by Robert Creeley
- The Innocence by Robert Creeley
- The Conspiracy by Robert Creeley
- The Carnival by Robert Creeley
- Song by Robert Creeley
- Something by Robert Creeley
- Other by Robert Creeley
- Myself by Robert Creeley
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