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:
- Herodotus in Egypt Remeber Delos by Ruth Padel
- The Raft by Vachel Lindsay
- Miscast I poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Influence of Natural Objects by William Wordsworth
- My Daughter by Preeth Nambiar
- The Old Lowe House Staten Island
- Владимир Маяковский – Версаль
- Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV, To Richard Boyle, poem – Alexander Pope
- My Words Embrace by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Poppies In October by Sylvia Plath
- The Declaration of London by Rudyard Kipling
- how did poetry begin? by Raj Arumugam
- Sonnet Xi
- A Soliloquy Of The Full Moon, She Being In A Mad Passion by Samuel Coleridge
- Константин Бальмонт – Море – вечное стремленье, горы – царственный покой
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
- Leto and Niobe by Sappho
- It’s no use by Sappho
- It was you, Atthis, who said by Sappho
- It is the Muses by Sappho
- It is the Muses by Sappho
- I took my lyre and said by Sappho
- I have no complaint by Sappho
- Hymn To Aphrodite by Sappho
- Hesperus The Bringer by Sappho
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
- Grace by Sappho
- Like the gods. . . by Sappho
- To A Girl In A Garden by Sappho
- Evening by Sappho
- Drapple-thorned Aphrodite, by Sappho
- Dica by Sappho
- Cyprian, in my dream by Sappho
- Claïs by Sappho
- Blame Aphrodite by Sappho
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