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 Sirens’ Song by William Browne
- In The Event Of My Demise by Tupac Shakur
- Song IX: Ho Ye Who Seek Saving by William Morris
- Martha Washington by Sidney Lanier
- “From the man whom I love, though my heart I disguise,” by Tobias Smollett
- To a Virtuous Young Lady poem – John Milton poems
- On Woman by William Butler Yeats
- His Bargain by William Butler Yeats
- Melinda Mae by Shel Silverstein
- A Song. by Walt Whitman
- The Arrivals by Sharon Olds
- Dedication by Wole Soyinka
- Only Breath by Jelaluddin Rumi
- A Fragment poem – Alfred Austin
- Don’t fear death poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
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
- Refrigerator, 1957 by Thomas Lux
- Red Planet Haiku by Thomas J Camp
- Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City by Thomas Lux
- On The Death Of A Favourite Cat, Drowned In A Tub Of Gold Fishes by Thomas Gray
- Ode On The Spring by Thomas Gray
- Ode On The Pleasure Arising From Vicissitude by Thomas Gray
- Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College by Thomas Gray
- My Country Place by Thomas J Camp
- Motel Seedy by Thomas Lux
- Monsters under the bed by Thomas J Camp
- Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down by Thomas Lux
- Lucky by Thomas Lux
- Thomas Gray – Thomas Gray
- Hymn To Adversity by Thomas Gray
- Henry Clay’s Mouth by Thomas Lux
- He Has Lived In Many Houses by Thomas Lux
- Gorgeous Surfaces by Thomas Lux
- Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
- Drummer Boy by Thomas J Camp
- Becalmed and Bewildered by Thomas J Camp
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Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003) an American poet, a contemporary classic of American poetry.