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 Sandbox by Rachel McKibbens
- Ольга Берггольц – Вечерняя станция
- My World Destroyed by Roberto Cocina
- Константин Бальмонт – Да, я люблю одну тебя
- Владимир Маяковский – Рабочий! (РОСТА №735)
- He Hears The Cry Of The Sedge by William Butler Yeats
- Яков Полонский – Ночная дума
- Sonnet 134: So, now I have confessed that he is thine by William Shakespeare
- If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem by Yehuda Amichai
- The Bear, The Fire, And The Snow by Shel Silverstein
- Their Reposessions by Michael P Amram
- This Aloneness by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Sonnet X
- I took my lyre and said by Sappho
- The Distress’d Travellers; or, Labour in Vain by William Cowper
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
- Without You by Miraj Patel
- Wild Soul by Michael Yuan
- Why Me? by Michael Yuan
- Why Do All Good Things Come To An End? by Michael Yuan
- Urban Caterpillar by Minal Sarosh
- Umbrella by Mike Yuan
- To A Sad Daughter by Michael Ondaatje
- There Can Never Be Another You by Miraj Patel
- Their Reposessions by Michael P Amram
- The Wild Goose’s Will by Mike Yuan
- The Tree and the Marble by Mike Yuan
- The Time Around Scars by Michael Ondaatje
- The Only One I Can’t Live Without, Its You by Miraj Patel
- The Only One I Can’t Live Without, Its You by Miraj Patel
- The Natural History of Elephants by Milton Acorn
- The lords above by Michael Nikoletseas
- The Lonely Climber: A Seed Poem by Mike Yuan
- The King by Michael Yuan
- The Island by Milton Acorn
- The Fraser River by Mike Yuan
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.