Meeting
by A. S. J. Tessimond
Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats’ meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.
We then, at first encounter, should be silent;
Not court the cortex but the epidermis;
Not work from inside out but outside in;
Discover each other’s flesh, its scent and texture;
Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends,
The hands, the hair; before the inept lips open.
Instead of which we are resonant, explicit.
Our words like windows intercept our meaning.
Our four eyes fence and flinch and awkwardly
Wince into shadow, slide oblique to ambush.
Hands stir, retract. The pulse is insulated.
Blood is turned inwards, lonely; skin unhappy …
While always under all, but interrupted,
Antennae stretch … waver … and almost … touch.

A few random poems:
- Taking On by Satish Verma
- How Do You Produce Original Articles?
- After-Thought by William Wordsworth
- Sonet 43 by William Alexander
- And Still to USA they get! by Tom Mukasa
- Broken wings of a Heart by Saajida Gora
- One Ran Before by Yvor Winters
- Easter Communion poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Василий Курочкин – Раздумье
- Elegy VII. Anno Aetates Undevigesimo (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper
- Омар Хайям – Меняем реки, страны, города
- four legs good, two legs badOwl Hoots and Grasshopper Sings by Raj Arumugam
- From The ‘Antigone’ by William Butler Yeats
- Bubblin’ Up by Shel Silverstein
- A Dream by Robert Burns
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