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:
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Свети мне, солнышко
- Нина Воронель – Высокосный год
- a_dialogue.html
- Considering The Snail by Thom Gunn
- A Sigh In The Night
- The Worlds Greatest Smoke Off by Shel Silverstein
- Man In Black by Sylvia Plath
- Николай Тихонов – Когда людям советским
- Robert Burns: Fickle Fortune: Fragment
- Epitaph for Robert Aiken by Robert Burns
- Алексей Жемчужников – За днями ненастными с темными тучами
- His Confidence by William Butler Yeats
- In Drear-Nighted December poem – John Keats poems
- Омар Хайям – Бокала полного веселый вид мне люб
- Михаил Лермонтов – Боюсь не смерти я
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
- Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 96: Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLIX by William Shakespeare
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