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:
- Lady Clare poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Иван Варавва – Мать Кубань
- The Death of Cromwell poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Sappho Redivivus: A Fragment by Robert Burns
- Never Bite A Married Woman On The Thigh by Shel Silverstein
- Flute Notes From A Reedy Pond by Sylvia Plath
- Анатолий Жигулин – Мне помнится рудник Бутугычаг
- Water by Robert Lowell
- A Little Tooth by Thomas Lux
- At Oxford by William Lisle Bowles
- Федор Сологуб – Я иду путём опасным
- Sonnet 21: So is it not with me as with that muse by William Shakespeare
- Father Divine poem – A. D. Winans poems | Poetry Monster
- TEMPORARY AND NOW by PEGGY AYLSWORTH
- The Craftsman by Rudyard Kipling
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
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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.