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:
- I Am Part Of The Load by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- STRANGE HAPPENINGS by Satish Verma
- Who’s Who by W H Auden
- Prayer For Lightning poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- English Poetry. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Wait. Элла Уилкокс.
- Владимир Набоков – В полнолунье, в гостиной пыльной и пышной
- A Eulogy by Shaunna Harper
- Year that Trembled. by Walt Whitman
- Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant
- Наталья Хрущева – Дождик и художник
- To John Hamilton Reynolds poem – John Keats poems
- Epitaph on Wm. Graham, Esq., of Mossknowe by Robert Burns
- Владимир Высоцкий – Старательская
- The rainy Pleiads wester poem – A. E. Housman
- For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell
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
- Three Songs Of Zahir U Din
- Thoughts Mahomed Akram
- Though In My Firmament Thou Wilt Not Shine
- This Month The Almonds Bloom At Kandahar
- There Is No Breeze To Cool The Heat Of Love
- The Window Overlooking The Harbour
- The Tom Toms
- The Temple Dancing Girl
- The Teak Forest
- The Singer
- The River Of Pearls At Fez Translation
- The Rice Was Under Water
- The Rice Boat
- The Regret Of The Ranee In The Hall Of Peacocks
- The Rao Of Ilore
- The Plains
- The Net Of Memory
- The Masters
- The Lute Player Of Casa Blanca
- The Lament Of Yasmini The Dancing Girl
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