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:
- Алексей Жемчужников – Забудь их шумное волненье
- We embraced and talked about rains by Vinko Kalinic
- It is a Show by Rixa White
- Under the Greenwood Tree by William Shakespeare
- The Poet And The Muse poem – Alfred Austin
- Sea World by Nin Andrews
- Private Ground by Sylvia Plath
- On Miltiades by William Cowper
- The Little Boy And The Old Man by Shel Silverstein
- Ольга Ермолаева – Псевдоготика для русских романтических сердец
- Resurgam
- Storm poem – André Rostant poems
- Ode To A Loved One by Sappho
- Владимир Высоцкий – Ленинградская блокада
- A Necklace by William Strode
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
- Before you knew you owned it poem – Alice Walker
- Because We Never Practiced With The Escape Chamber poem – Alice Fulton
- Ballad Of The Skeletons poem – Allen Ginsberg
- About Face poem – Alice Fulton
- A winning lot
- 30th Birthday poem – Alice Notley
- Why?
- Where Are You?
- Tell Me
- Teacher
- Sleep
- Intruder
- Inside/Outside The Window
- Why Feed The Early Signs Of Boredom? poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Upon The Hills Of Georgia poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Under The Blue Skies… poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Under A Portrait Of Jukowsky poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Under A Portrait Of Jukowsky poem – Alexander Pushkin
- To My Friends poem – Alexander Pushkin
- To Gnedich poem – Alexander Pushkin
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