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:
- Romulus and Remus by Rudyard Kipling
- Happiness by Stevie Smith
- Зинаида Александрова – Ромашки
- Федор Сологуб – Круг начертан, и Сивилла
- A Paraphrase on an Ode in Horace’s Third Book, beginning thus:— “Inclusam Danaen turris ahenea.” by Abraham Cowley
- Анатолий Жигулин – О, жизнь! Я всё тебе прощаю
- When You Go Away by W. S. Merwin
- Written In The Cottage Where Burns Was Born poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Дядя ЭМЭСПЭО
- Again
- Eco en la madrugada by Mara Romero Torres
- A Blockhead poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Not Heat Flames up and Consumes. by Walt Whitman
- Life, wait for me by Martin Zakovski
- The Worlds Greatest Smoke Off by Shel Silverstein
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
- To Delia by William Cowper
- To A Young Friend, On His Arriving At Cambridge Wet, When No Rain Had Fallen There by William Cowper
- The Symptoms of Love by William Cowper
- The Silkworm by William Cowper
- The Secrets Of Divine Love Are To Be Kept by William Cowper
- The Rose by William Cowper
- The Perfect Sacrifice by William Cowper
- The Parrot by William Cowper
- The Lily And The Rose by William Cowper
- The Ice Palace by William Cowper
- The Distress’d Travellers; or, Labour in Vain by William Cowper
- Sunset And Sunrise (Translated From Owen) by William Cowper
- Strada’s Nightingale by William Cowper
- Sonnet To Henry Cowper, Esq. by William Cowper
- Sonnet To A Young Lady On Her Birth-Day by William Cowper
- Repose In God by William Cowper
- Pity For Poor Africans by William Cowper
- On The Queen’s Visit To London, The Night Of The 17th March 1789 by William Cowper
- On The Loss Of The “Royal George” by William Cowper
- On The Ice Islands Seen Floating In The German Ocean by William Cowper
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