by Ai
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?

A few random poems:
- Владимир Маяковский – Наш паровоз, стрелой лети
- Transient
- In The Metropolitan Museum by Sara Teasdale
- His Confidence by William Butler Yeats
- said, unsaid by tulip
- Жан де Лафонтен – Смерть и Несчастный
- Владимир Костров – Закат приморский умирает
- Vacant Lot With Pokeweed poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Remorse: A Fragment by Robert Burns
- After Parting by Sara Teasdale
- My Garden by Thomas Edward Brown
- Sonnet 13: O, that you were your self! But, love, you are by William Shakespeare
- Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower by Taha Muhammad Ali
- LET Go.. by Renu Ayyar
- Away With Funeral Music by Robert Louis Stevenson
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-flash-reverses-time.html
- que-sera-sera.html
- power-of-thought.html
- phantasm.html
- once_was_a_singer_for_god_remembering_nekia.html
- old-boy.html
- lost_love_is_never_lost.html
- long_i_waited_in_vain.html
- holiday_letter_for_a_poet_gone_to_war.html
- gratitudes_of_a_dozen_roses.html
- every_hour_henceforth.html
- einstein-defining-special-relativity.html
- cell-mate.html
- calling-the-spirits.html
- angel_of_christmas_love_shining_bright.html
- angel_of_better_days_to_come.html
- All Night in Savannah the Wind Wrote Poetry by Aberjhani
- a-tempest-in-a-teacup.html
- Eveleen’s Bower by Thomas Moore
- Erin! The Tear and the Smile in Thine Eyes by Thomas Moore
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