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:
- Convalescence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Бахчисарай
- Teaching Children to Write by Free Writing
- The River Has Its Memories by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Love Expression in Marriage
- Владимир Британишский – Клейнмихель
- Looks A-Know’d Avore by William Barnes
- Robert Burns: My Wife’s A Winsome Wee Thing:
- Plague Of Dead Sharks
- A Dedication. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier
- A Divine Mistress by Thomas Carew
- The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Before the white chrysanthemum by Yosa Buson
- Анатолий Жигулин – Кордон Песчаный
- Grammer A-Crippled by William Barnes
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
- A little ink more or less! by Stephen Crane
- A god in wrath by Stephen Crane
- Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind by Stephen Crane
- Charity thou art a lie, by Stephen Crane
- Blustering God by Stephen Crane
- Black riders came from the sea. by Stephen Crane
- Behold, the grave of a wicked man by Stephen Crane
- Behold, from the land of the farther suns by Stephen Crane
- Ay, workman, make me a dream, by Stephen Crane
- And you love me by Stephen Crane
- A youth in apparel that glittered by Stephen Crane
- A spirit sped by Stephen Crane
- A slant of sun on dull brown walls, by Stephen Crane
- A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices by Stephen Crane
- With No Experience In Such Matters by Stephen Dunn
- Welcome by Stephen Dunn
- Walking The Marshland by Stephen Dunn
- The Sudden Light And The Trees by Stephen Dunn
- The Routine Things Around The House by Stephen Dunn
- Story by Stephen Dunn
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