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:
- Владимир Орлов – Ковровые дорожки
- Robert Burns: Address Of Beelzebub: To the Right Honourable the Earl of Breadalbane, President of the Right Honourable and Honourable the Highland Society, which met on the 23rd of May last at the Shakespeare, Covent Garden, to concert ways and means to frustrate the designs of five hundred Highlanders, who, as the Society were informed by Mr. M’Kenzie of Applecross, were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and masters whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of Mr. Macdonald of Glengary to the wilds of Canada, in search of that fantastic thing-Liberty.
- O Bitter Sprig! Confession Sprig! by Walt Whitman
- English Poetry. Henry Livingston. To the Memory of Sarah Livingston. Генри Ливингстон.
- Федор Сологуб – Я дорогой невинной и смелою
- Exposure by Seamus Heaney
- Низами Гянджеви – Искендер-наме – Страница 13 из 15
- To The Nameless Soldier
- Last Curtain by Rabindranath Tagore
- Sonnet 4: Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend by William Shakespeare
- was_then.html
- The Investiture by Siegfried Sassoon
- NOCHE MARINA by Victoria l.mora paoli
- Владимир Гиляровский – Я эоловой арфы струна
- Lines to an Old Sweetheart by Robert Burns
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
- Life of Ms Anonymous by Raj Arumugam
- life begins tomorrow by Raj Arumugam
- Li Po, the moon and me by Raj Arumugam
- Li Po drowns by Raj Arumugam
- Let us pull, pull the boat by Raj Arumugam
- let us go with no care by Raj Arumugam
- let the calm of the evening by Raj Arumugam
- let’s love the lawn by Raj Arumugam
- let’s go mummy by Raj Arumugam
- laugh to cry by Raj Arumugam
- last words to the moon by Raj Arumugam
- Kangaroo talks to the Sun by Raj Arumugam
- Kadambari by Raj Arumugam
- it flows by Raj Arumugam
- in praise of the moon by Raj Arumugam
- I waited by Raj Arumugam
- I see you moon by Raj Arumugam
- I just love you by Raj Arumugam
- I bring hope and love by Raj Arumugam
- I am Yun Du-seo by Raj Arumugam
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