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:
- Round by Weldon Kees
- Reveille by Primo Levi
- Music by Walter de la Mare
- Here, Sailor. by Walt Whitman
- Untitled XIV by Yunus Emre
- The Brave and the Love Flute by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- La Nue
- Robert Burns: Extempore Reply To An Invitation:
- A Song by Robert Creeley
- Metaphysical View by Satish Verma
- Haiku: His Little Drum by Monty Gilmer
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Две прелестницы
- Watching Unto God In The Night Season by William Cowper
- The Tree by Sara Teasdale
- What Place is Besieged? by Walt Whitman
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 Маяковский – Что значило “празднование новогоднее”?.. (РОСТА №672)
- Что такое хорошо и что такое плохо – Владимир Маяковский (Стих): Читать стихотворение на Poetry Monster
- Владимир Маяковский – Что такое II Интернационал?.. (РОСТА №133)
- Владимир Маяковский – Что сделать, чтоб Всероссийский съезд Советов… (РОСТА №662)
- Владимир Маяковский – Что может быть старей кустарей?.. (РОСТА №573)
- Владимир Маяковский – Что делать?.. (РОСТА №193)
- Владимир Маяковский – Что делать, чтоб сытому быть?.. (РОСТА №219)
- Владимир Маяковский – Что делать
- Владимир Маяковский – Чехарда в палате… (РОСТА №881)
- Владимир Маяковский – Четвертый вывоз
- Владимир Маяковский – Чемпионат всемирной классовой борьбы
- Владимир Маяковский – Чем отличается Красная Армия от царской?.. (РОСТА №559)
- Владимир Маяковский – Чье рождество
- Владимир Маяковский – Частушки (Милкой мне в подарок бурка…)
- Владимир Маяковский – Частушки
- Владимир Маяковский – Чаеуправление (реклама)
- Владимир Маяковский – Бюрократиада
- Владимир Маяковский – Было с белым много дел… (Главполитпросвет №44)
- Владимир Маяковский – Был без работы буржуям пир… (Главполитпросвет №24)
- Владимир Маяковский – Буржуй, прощайся с приятными деньками
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.