A poem by Alan Dugan
For old Billy Dugan, shot in the ass in the Civil War, my father said.
The old wound in my ass
has opened up again, but I
am past the prodigies
of youth’s campaigns, and weep
where I used to laugh
in war’s red humors, half
in love with silly-assed pains
and half not feeling them.
I have to sit up with
an indoor unsittable itch
before I go down late
and weeping to the storm-
cellar on a dirty night
and go to bed with the worms.
So pull the dirt up over me
and make a family joke
for Old Billy Blue Balls,
the oldest private in the world
with two ass-holes and no
place more to go to for a laugh
except the last one. Say:
The North won the Civil War
without much help from me
although I wear a proof
of the war’s obscenity.

A few random poems:
- Requiescat poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Олег Бундур – Каменный берег
- Илья Эренбург – О Москве
- Sonnet IV by William Shakespeare
- Николай Языков – Элегия (Есть много всяких мук – и много я их знаю)
- There Can Never Be Another You by Miraj Patel
- Celebrate Spring Today poem with a translation – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Flowers Of The Dust by John Oxenham
- Untitled XXII by Yunus Emre
- Иван Барков – Выбор
- In Memoriam 16: I envy not in any moods poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Ce N’est Jamais Le Même Jardin by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- Revenge of the Ghost of the Betrayed Husband by Raj Arumugam
- As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario’s Shores. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Маяковский – Что сделать, чтоб Всероссийский съезд Советов… (РОСТА №662)
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
- Playing With Big Numbers
- Percy Janes Boarding The Bus
- One Word
- Once She Dreamed
- O God
- Notebook Of A Return To The Native Land
- Night Words
- Negligence
- Mustard Flowers
- Meditation With Feet
- Love
- Little Talk
- Light The Festive Candles
- Levitation
- Labor Pains
- Labels
- Kalli
- Insect039s Nest
- In This Cul De Sac
- I See Chile In My Rearview Mirror
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.