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:
- Joy of giving by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Forgotten Promises by Rixa White
- Robert Burns: Lovely Young Jessie:
- Robert Burns: You’re Welcome, Willie Stewart:
- From the heart of your heart by Mukeshkumar Raval
- Landscape by Paul Celan
- Advent by Patrick Kavanagh
- Sonnet 149: Canst thou, O cruel, say I love thee not by William Shakespeare
- The Quesion by Rudyard Kipling
- Robert Burns: The Auld Farmer’s New-Year-Morning Salutation To His Auld Mare, Maggie: On giving her the accustomed ripp of corn to hansel in the New Year.
- Robert Burns: Epistle To J. Lapraik, An Old Scottish Bard:
- Ring Of Grass by Shel Silverstein
- oh no – not another love poem! by Raj Arumugam
- I see you moon by Raj Arumugam
- Paradise Lost: Book 12 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
- The Old Stone Cross by William Butler Yeats
- The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water by William Butler Yeats
- The Old Age Of Queen Maeve by William Butler Yeats
- The Nineteenth Century And After by William Butler Yeats
- The New Faces by William Butler Yeats
- The Municipal Gallery Revisited by William Butler Yeats
- The Mountain Tomb by William Butler Yeats
- The Mother Of God by William Butler Yeats
- The Moods by William Butler Yeats
- The Meditation Of The Old Fisherman by William Butler Yeats
- The Mask by William Butler Yeats
- The Man Who Dreamed Of Faeryland by William Butler Yeats
- The Magi by William Butler Yeats
- The Madness Of King Goll by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover’s Song by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love by William Butler Yeats
- The Lover Asks Forgiveness Because Of His Many Moods by William Butler Yeats
- The Living Beauty by William Butler Yeats
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