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:
- Madeira From The Sea by Sara Teasdale
- To poem – John Keats poems
- My Dear Old Mother by Walter William Safar
- Валерий Брюсов – Это я
- Amphion poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Free Poetry Competitions – Prepare to Win The Next Poetry Competition That You Enter!
- may each find the peace within by Raj Arumugam
- The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- Олег Сердобольский – Черная считалка
- The Other Side of Panic by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Song—Willie brew’d a Peck o’ Maut by Robert Burns
- Sonnet 55: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments by William Shakespeare
- In a Vale by Robert Frost
- Ballade Of His Books poem – Andrew Lang poems
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 23.1. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
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 Eclipsed Past by Tholana Ashok Chakravarthy
- The Call of the Crows by Tanmoy
- The Blind Man by Théophile Gautier
- The Beautiful Heartbreak by Talha Jafri
- Snow Flakes by Tala Bar
- Selecting A Reader by Ted Kooser
- Seasons by Tala Bar
- Ritual by Tala Bar
- Passion of Greatness by Terence Ray Robertson
- On The Move ‘Man, You Gotta Go. by Thom Gunn
- My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn
- Meeting at an Airport by Taha Muhammad Ali
- Lucid Dreams by Talha Jafri
- Love In Reverse by Talha Jafri
- Love Equals Insanity by Talha Jafri
- Light by Tala Bar
- Last Poem by Ted Berrigan
- In January by Ted Kooser
- I Want It Now by Roald Dahl
- Exodus by Taha Muhammad Ali
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