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:
- The Troops by Siegfried Sassoon
- I Saw His Round Mouth’s Crimson by Wilfred Owen
- Song—The Birks of Aberfeldy by Robert Burns
- Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling. by Walt Whitman
- Аля Кудряшева – Ты рисуй, девочка, небо пошире
- Михаил Лермонтов – Ах! Ныне я не тот совсем
- The Touchstone by William Allingham
- Robert Burns: Open The Door To Me, Oh:
- Fragment Of An Ode To Maia. Written On May Day 1818 poem – John Keats poems
- Николай Глазков – Чингисхан, Батый, Аттила
- Boo to Buddha poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Николай Карамзин – Из письма к И. И. Дмитриеву (Что ж может быть любви и счастия быстрее)
- What the Coal-Heaver Said by Vachel Lindsay
- The Ghost Of Roger Casement by William Butler Yeats
- Selfish World, Selfish People by Shahbaz Khan
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
- Hear the Voice by William Blake
- Introduction to the Songs of Innocence by William Blake
- French Revolution, The (excerpt) by William Blake
- I Saw a Chapel by William Blake
- I Heard an Angel by William Blake
- Broken Love by William Blake
- Eternity by William Blake
- Holy Thursday (Innocence) by William Blake
- Ah! Sun-Flower by William Blake
- A Cradle Song by William Blake
- Earth’s Answer by William Blake
- A Dream by William Blake
- Infant Joy by William Blake
- Evening Star by William Blake
- Auguries Of Innocence by William Blake
- And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time by William Blake
- Infant Sorrow by William Blake
- If It Is True What the Prophets Write by William Blake
- How Sweet I Roam’d by William Blake
- Holy Thursday (Experience) by William Blake
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