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:
- Sonnet CXI: O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide by William Shakespeare
- In Poetry by Rifat Ilgaz
- Mugging (I) poem – Allen Ginsberg
- Primrose Rose by Rainbow Reed
- Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight by Vachel Lindsay
- “Wishing to float” by Seema Gupta
- Stars Over The Dordogne by Sylvia Plath
- Inscription For A Moss-House In The Shrubbery At Weston by William Cowper
- In the Home Stretch by Robert Frost
- O What Is That Sound by W H Auden
- Николай Языков – Элегия (Поденщик, тяжело навьюченный дровами)
- Song—A Fiddler in the North by Robert Burns
- Love
- Шекспир – Не позволяю помыслам ревнивым – Сонет 57
- Our Refuge
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
- Starlight
- Song Of The Peri
- Song Of The Parao Camping Ground
- Song Of The Enfifa River
- Song Of The Devoted Slave
- Song Of The Colours By Taj Mahomed
- Song Of Taj Mahomed
- Song Of Ramesram Temple Girl
- Song Of Khan Zada
- Song Of Jasoda
- Song Of Faiz Ulla
- Song By Gulbaz
- Sleep
- Shivratri The Night Of Shiva While The Procession Passed At Ramesram
- Sher Afzul
- Sea Song
- Sampan Song
- Rutland Gate
- Reverie Zahir U Din
- Reverie Ofmahomed Akram At The Tamarind Tank
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.