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 Луговской – Курсантская венгерка
- A Silence poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sonnet 16 poem – John Milton poems
- The Dawn
- On Mr. Gay poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Amy Margaret’s Five Year Old by William Allingham
- The Hwomestead A-Vell Into Hand by William Barnes
- The Blue Scarf poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Anacreontics Drinking
- seaport.html
- Children of My Own by Marie Starr
- Wild Soul by Michael Yuan
- It Is March by W. S. Merwin
- Николай Заболоцкий – Портрет
- Владимир Высоцкий – Маски
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
- Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 96: Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXVI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLVI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXLIX by William Shakespeare
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