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:
- Николай Заболоцкий – Засуха
- Lamhe by Priyanka Tungana
- Низами Гянджеви – Семь красавиц
- Sunday Morning Blues poem – A. D. Winans poems | Poetry Monster
- A song of living poem – Amelia Burr poems | Poems and Poetry
- Before The World Was Made by William Butler Yeats
- Николай Заболоцкий – Змеи
- The Battle Of Harlaw–Evergreen Version poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Admonition by Sylvia Plath
- Medallion by Sylvia Plath
- Adieu…, adieu…. by Vladimir Marku
- Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries poem – A. E. Housman
- Song—Fragment—Leezie Lindsay by Robert Burns
- “Once we were happy” by Torquato Tasso
- Вергилий – Буколики
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
- An Afternoon by Raymond Carver
- Watching the Bird Watcher by Richard Schiffman
- Virtual Impressions by Renu Ayyar
- Two Wings by Ricardo Sternberg
- They won’t Know by Rifat Ilgaz
- The Laws of God, The Laws of Man by A. E. Housman
- The Invention of Honey by Ricardo Sternberg
- Swallows by Richard Schiffman
- Supply=Demand by Ricardo Sternberg
- Skyscrapers by Rifat Ilgaz
- Silence by Riju Dave
- Rainbow by Ria De Torres
- Only If I Know by Rifat Ilgaz
- My Search by Renu Ayyar
- My Partner in Crime by Rennu Ayyar
- My Last Poem by Rifat Ilgaz
- Man Versus Satan by Shahida Latif
- Lovers in Cafe by Aiyah De Torres
- LET Go.. by Renu Ayyar
- In Poetry by Rifat Ilgaz
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