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 Cooling Tower poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- К нам приходит в день февральский снежною тропой
- New York at Night poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Exmoor poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Reveille by Primo Levi
- Владимир Высоцкий – Я стою, стою спиною к строю
- How Sweet I Roam’d by William Blake
- Drying Clothes poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- Ballade Of True Wisdom poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Robert Burns: The Gowden Locks Of Anna:
- On Miltiades by William Cowper
- A Seed by William Allingham
- Владимир Степанов – Угадай-ка, это кто?
- Mountain Wellhead
- Ballades V – Of His Choice Of A Sepulchre poem – Andrew Lang 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
- WHAT ASYLUM! by Satish Verma
- WARMING UP by Satish Verma
- WALKING TOELESS by Satish Verma
- WALKING INTO YOU by Satish Verma
- VOICES by Satish Verma
- VERY DISTURBING by Satish Verma
- Vaulting by Satish Verma
- Unsung Hands by Satish Verma
- Unstitching by Satish Verma
- Unspoken by Satish Verma
- Unruffled by Satish Verma
- UNREADABLE by Satish Verma
- Unphrasing by Satish Verma
- Unforgetting by Satish Verma
- UNEVEN PATH by Satish Verma
- UNDECIPHERABLE by Satish Verma
- TURNING GRAY by Satish Verma
- TRUNCATED by Satish Verma
- TRANSPARENCY by Satish Verma
- TOELESS JOURNEY by Satish Verma
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