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:
- Robert Burns: Address To The Woodlark:
- Ultima Thule by William Ellery Leonard
- The Bowling-Green by William Somervile
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 03 – part 05 by Torquato Tasso
- Long-Legged Fly by William Butler Yeats
- Shot? So Quick, So Clean an Ending? poem – A. E. Housman
- Because We Never Practiced With The Escape Chamber poem – Alice Fulton poems | Poetry Monster
- Sonnet 89: Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault by William Shakespeare
- Ford o’ Kabul River by Rudyard Kipling
- Bond and Free by Robert Frost
- Colonel Martin by William Butler Yeats
- Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind by William Shakespeare
- A Farewell poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- xai_kou_from_book_seeds_of_faith.html
- Олег Карелин – Фото
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 English Flag by Rudyard Kipling
- The Egg-Shell by Rudyard Kipling
- The ‘eathen by Rudyard Kipling
- The Dove of Dacca by Rudyard Kipling
- The Destroyers by Rudyard Kipling
- The Derelict by Rudyard Kipling
- The Deep-Sea Cables by Rudyard Kipling
- The Declaration of London by Rudyard Kipling
- The Dead King by Rudyard Kipling
- The Day’s Work by Rudyard Kipling
- The Craftsman by Rudyard Kipling
- The Conundrum of the Workshops by Rudyard Kipling
- The Comforters by Rudyard Kipling
- The Coastwise Lights by Rudyard Kipling
- The Children’s Song by Rudyard Kipling
- The Captive by Rudyard Kipling
- The Burial by Rudyard Kipling
- The Broken Men by Rudyard Kipling
- The Betrothed by Rudyard Kipling
- The Benefactors by Rudyard Kipling
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