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:
- How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven by Vachel Lindsay
- Everlasting Wander by Rixa White
- At the Galleria Shopping Mall by Tony Hoagland
- Sonnet 10
- Live With Me On Earth Under the Invisible Daylight Moon by Milton Acorn
- Who is now Reading This? by Walt Whitman
- Love Preparing to Fly poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Riposte to the Bard: Sonnet 130 remade in my lady’s image by Neil Outar
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Современная идиллия
- Аля Кудряшева – Осень в городе
- Address to the Deil by Robert Burns
- A prayer to the Wind by Thomas Carew
- Sonet 55 by William Alexander
- Postures by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Sealed Appropriate
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
- Loneliness is a prison by Vladimir Marku
- Little angel by Vladimir Marku
- Let Him In by Vishnu J Mohan
- I Will by Vishü Rita Krocha
- I turn my head by Vladimir Marku
- Her smile by Vladimir Marku
- Happiness by Vishü Rita Krocha
- Friends by Vishü Rita Krocha
- Forget-me-nots by Vishü Rita Krocha
- Evening balcony by Vladimir Marku
- Eve of spring by Vladimir Marku
- Eavesdropping myself by Vladimir Marku
- Desperation by Vishü Rita Krocha
- Demon by Vladimir Marku
- Breather by Vishü Rita Krocha
- Aquarium epoch by Vladimir Marku
- After Midnight by Walid Saba
- Adieu…, adieu…. by Vladimir Marku
- Who’s Who by W H Auden
- We’re Late by W H Auden
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.