A poem by Alan Dugan
The skin ripples over my body like moon-wooed water,
rearing to escape me. Where could it find another
animal as naked as the one it hates to cover?
Once it told me what was happening outside,
who was attacking, who caressing, and what the air
was doing to feed or freeze me. Now I wake up
dark at night, in a textureless ocean of ignorance,
or fruit bites back and water bruises like a stone.
It’s jealousy, because I look for other tools to know
with, and other armor, better girded to my wish.
So let it lie, turn off the clues or try to leave:
sewn on me seamless like those painful shirts
the body-hating saints wore, the sheath of hell
is pierced to my darkness nonetheless: what traitors
labor in my face, what hints they smuggle through
its arching guard! But even in the night it jails,
with nothing but its lies and silences to feed upon,
the jail itself can make a scenery, sing prison songs,
and set off fireworks to praise a homemade day.

A few random poems:
- The Infernal Regions
- Reviving My Feminity poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
- Олег Бундур – Тополёк
- Blown from the west by Yosa Buson
- Жан де Лафонтен – Дровосек и Меркурий
- Владимир Маяковский – Тексты “окон”, переработанные для сборника “Грозный смех”
- Lines to John M’Murdo of Drumlanrig by Robert Burns
- Watching Unto God In The Night Season (3) by William Cowper
- The Enemies Of The Little Box by Vasko Popa
- Less Than The Cloud To The Wind by Sara Teasdale
- Contraptions by Satish Verma
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песенка про мангустов
- Solitude at an Inn by Thomas Warton
- Василий Тредиаковский – О коль мне тамо сладка веселия было
- The Turnstile by William Barnes
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
- Gravity Suspended
- From Death
- Forfeiture
- For My Mother
- Fly Fly Butterfly
- Even The Rain
- Destiny Far Away
- Conversation
- Calling All Angels
- At The Locks Of The Void
- Anthem
- All In A Word
- A Teenage Pregnancy
- A Painting Morning
- A Child Of War
- Your Dream
- Ars Poetica
- The Vision Of Cassandra
- The Sacrifice Of Iphigenia
- The Lament Of The Old Nurse
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
Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003) an American poet, a contemporary classic of American poetry.