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:
- New Year On Dartmoor by Sylvia Plath
- You are coming! by Preeth Nambiar
- The Winds Out of the West Land Blow poem – A. E. Housman
- The Ghost Of Roger Casement by William Butler Yeats
- Mahomet Ali Beg; Or, the Faithful Minister of State by William Somervile
- After Long Silence by William Butler Yeats
- I Stood Tip-Toe Upon A Little Hill poem – John Keats poems
- What Best I See In Thee. by Walt Whitman
- Robert Burns: Thou Gloomy December :
- In Abeyance by Satish Verma
- Sonnet I. To My Brother George poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Корнилов – Нищий
- I Want To Write by Margaret Walker
- Gus: The Theatre Cat by T. S. Eliot
- On The Victory Obtained By Blake Over the Spaniards, In The Bay Of Scanctacruze, In The Island Of teneriff.1657 poem – Andrew Marvell 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
- Новелла Матвеева – Восток, прошедший чрез воображенье
- Новелла Матвеева – Ветер
- Новелла Матвеева – Величие?
- Новелла Матвеева – Василий Андреевич
- Новелла Матвеева – Страна Дельфиния
- Новелла Матвеева – Смех Фавна
- Новелла Матвеева – Река
- Новелла Матвеева – Пушкин
- Новелла Матвеева – Подсолнух
- Новелла Матвеева – Отражённым светом
- Новелла Матвеева – О юморе
- Новелла Матвеева – Набрела на правильную строчку
- Новелла Матвеева – Мне кажется
- Новелла Матвеева – Маяк
- Новелла Матвеева – Когда Вселенная открывает нам добровольно
- Новелла Матвеева – Иней
- Новелла Матвеева – Есть вопиющий быт, есть вещие примеры
- Новелла Матвеева – Двое (Баллада)
- Новелла Матвеева – Дома без крыш
- Новелла Матвеева – Будьте, как дети
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