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:
- Astrophel and Stella: XV by Sir Philip Sidney
- Tractor by Ted Hughes
- Forgotten Promises by Rixa White
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Одиночество
- Arcady Unheeding by Siegfried Sassoon
- Beautiful Moroccan by Stanley Wilkin
- I hear the roar of a Harley… by River Urke
- In The Stilness O’ The Night by William Barnes
- A Lover poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Robert Burns: Complimentary Epigram On Maria Riddell:
- Beyond Darkness And Despair by Renu Ayyar
- Elegy II. On The Death Of The University Beadle At Cambridge (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper
- Ballade Of The Muse poem – Andrew Lang poems
- On A Goldfinch, Starved To Death In His Cage by William Cowper
- Epitaphs Translated From Chiabrera by William Wordsworth
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 War Films by Sir Henry Newbolt
- The Black Hawk War of the Artists by Vachel Lindsay
- Repression of War Experience by Siegfried Sassoon
- Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries by A. E. Housman
- CIA Dope Calypso by Allen Ginsberg
- A Day on the Beach of War by Tony Stringfellow
- The Paint-Kings by Washington Allston
- Rosalie by Washington Allston
- On The Luxembourg Gallery by Washington Allston
- Eccentricity by Washington Allston
- Art by Washington Allston
- America To Great Britain by Washington Allston
- Year’s End by Weldon Kees
- The Upstairs Room by Weldon Kees
- The Smiles Of The Bathers by Weldon Kees
- The Furies by Weldon Kees
- The Doctor Will Return by Weldon Kees
- The Bell From Europe by Weldon Kees
- The Beach by Weldon Kees
- Round by Weldon Kees
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
