Because a razor cuts across a frame of film,
I wince, squinting my eye,
and because my day needs assembly
to make sense of the scenes anyway,
making a story from some pieces of truth, I go
outside to gather those pieces.
Thousands of moments spooling out
frames of mistakes in my day.
As if anyone’s to blame,
as if anyone could interpret the colliding
images, again and again, dragging
my imagination behind me,
I begin assembling.
I don’t know anything, so I seek
directions, following the path
of ants from your palm, out
the apartment door to
a beach. Is this where I’m
supposed to ask if my hands on you
bend some light around shade? Maybe
I’m not ready for the answer. They say
art imitates what we can sculpt or write
or just see when we turn ourselves
inside out. I can’t turn my eye away
from the sight of failure. The rain pelts rooftops.
I listen to the song, thinking
when the sun comes back,
beating down the door
in my head, I’ll salvage whatever sits
still long enough for me to render,
before anyone knows what really happened.
A few random poems:
- Вероника Тушнова – Звезда
- American Feuillage. by Walt Whitman
- Motel Pool by P. K. Page
- Ольга Берггольц – О, наверное, он не вернётся
- English Poetry. Richard Hovey. The Old Pine. Ричард Хави.
- The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Николай Гербель – В дорогу
- Жан де Лафонтен – Лисица, Мухи и Еж
- Sonnet III: With how sad steps by Sir Philip Sidney
- Covering Two Years by Weldon Kees
- Sport
- Zunsheen In The Winter by William Barnes
- A Certain Kind of Holy Men
- Breather by Vishü Rita Krocha
- Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced by William Shakespeare
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
- Владимир Агатов – Бессмертный Ленинград
- Влад Амелин – Приумножай добро
- Витя, Витенка, Витюша
- Витамины
- Виталий Тунников – Заюшкина избушка
- Виталий Тунников – Бумеранг
- Виталий Сивяков – Крещенье
- Виталий Ревякин – Самарский край
- Виталий Кодрян – 31 августа
- Виталий Бакалдин – Я не рос среди берез
- Виолетта Бережная – Много у меня друзей
- Виктор Шамонин-Версенев – Заяц-врун
- Виктор Шамонин-Версенев – Волк-дурень
- Виктор Шамонин-Версенев – Весёлый воробей
- Виктор Шамонин-Версенев – Дед-разиня, хитрая лиса и глупый волк
- Виктор Павлов – Милосердие в моем понимании
- Виктор Кудлачев – Весна
- Виктор Колесников – Вороний мат во все концы
- Виктор Кирюшин – Небеса набухшей парусиною
- Виктор Калитин – Фиалка
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

A. Van Jordan, born 1965 in Akron, Ohio, USA, is a contemporary American poet and the author of four important collections: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by the London Times; Quantum Lyrics, (W.W. Norton, 2007); and The Cineaste (W.W. Norton,, 2013). Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize.