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 Reverie of Poor Susan by William Wordsworth
- Polyphemus poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Wayfarer by Sara Teasdale
- Epitaph On Mr. Chester Of Chicheley by William Cowper
- What the People Said by Rudyard Kipling
- Robert Burns: On Hearing It Asserted Falsehood: is expressed in the Rev. Dr. Babington’s very looks.
- Sonnet LX by William Shakespeare
- In My Own Shire, If I Was Sad poem – A. E. Housman
- Interpret The Light
- Tryin’ On Clothes by Shel Silverstein
- Gods. by Walt Whitman
- Олег Чупров – На предназначенной орбите
- Wisdom in Love by Lutfi Abdallah a.k.a Laso
- Николай Заболоцкий – Разговор с медведем
- Кондратий Рылеев – Мне тошно здесь, как на чужбине
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
- Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 96: Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLIX by William Shakespeare
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