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:
- How Sweet I Roam’d by William Blake
- Miracle Ice Cream
- Море огней украшает причалы, вокзалы
- Николай Языков – Давным-давно люблю я страстно
- A Captive Throstle poem – Alfred Austin
- Hypatia by Stanley Wilkin
- Robert Burns: Stanzas On Naething: Extempore Epistle to Gavin Hamilton, Esq.
- The Hedger by William Barnes
- First Poem by Peter Orlovsky
- Elegy by Siegfried Sassoon
- On the Seashore by Rabindranath Tagore
- Sonnet poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A New Broom by Witt Wittmann
- Politics poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Triumph by Siegfried Sassoon
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
- SOMALIA CALLING by Satish Verma
- Solitudes by Satish Verma
- SNAKE CHARMING by Satish Verma
- Smiling Buddha by Satish Verma
- Singing Darkness by Satish Verma
- Sin and Prayer by Satish Verma
- Silver Trails by Satish Verma
- Sidelined by Satish Verma
- Shimmering by Satish Verma
- SELF-WATCH by Satish Verma
- Searing Heat by Satish Verma
- SCULPTURING by Satish Verma
- SCARY DANCE by Satish Verma
- REVOLT OF A SUTRA by Satish Verma
- REGENERATING by Satish Verma
- REFLECTING THE PRAISES by Satish Verma
- PURE STEEL by Satish Verma
- PROGNOSIS by Satish Verma
- PRESCIENCE by Satish Verma
- Praying Hurriedly 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