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:
- Олег Бундур – Как папа прогуливал школу
- Sonnet CXLVIII by William Shakespeare
- Courtship by Mark Strand
- Ah! Sun-Flower by William Blake
- Crazy Insane by Stephen Sweitzer
- Love’s Wisdom poem – Alfred Austin
- Childhood by Margaret Walker
- Language by W. S. Merwin
- Владимир Костров – Выходец из волости лесистой
- The Voice of Woman by Shahida Latif
- Poems.html 0
- Николай Глазков – Поэзия! Ты не потерпишь фальши
- A Week by Thomas Hardy
- Epitaph for Mr. W. Cruickshank by Robert Burns
- Владимир Маяковский – Наше воскресенье
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
- Untitled XIX by Yunus Emre
- Untitled XIV by Yunus Emre
- Untitled XIII by Yunus Emre
- Untitled XII by Yunus Emre
- Untitled XI by Yunus Emre
- Untitled X by Yunus Emre
- Untitled VIII by Yunus Emre
- Untitled VII by Yunus Emre
- Untitled V by Yunus Emre
- Untitled IX by Yunus Emre
- Untitled IV by Yunus Emre
- Untitled III by Yunus Emre
- Untitled II by Yunus Emre
- Untitled I by Yunus Emre
- Love Compared To A Game Of Tables by William Strode
- Keepe On Your Maske (Version for his Mistress) by William Strode
- Keepe On Your Maske And Hide Your Eye by William Strode
- Justification by William Strode
- Jacke-On-Both-Sides by William Strode
- William Strode – William Strode
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