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:
- Николай Языков – Е. А. Свербеевой (Мысль неразгульного поэта)
- I took my lyre and said by Sappho
- Factory Windows are Always Broken by Vachel Lindsay
- Girl Child – An Alternate Reality by Rekha Seshadri
- The Summons poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Alone by Yvor Winters
- Haltering by Satish Verma
- Stanzas poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Sonnet 132: Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me by William Shakespeare
- Ольга Ермолаева – Симферопольский скорый
- Still poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
- Ode On Indolence poem – John Keats poems
- Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down by Thomas Lux
- Зинаида Александрова – Одуванчик
- Владимир Маяковский – Не вразброд, не случайно (Главполитпросвет)
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
- Infelix
- Hemlock Furrows
- Genius
- Fragment
- Dying
- Dreams Beauty
- Depths
- Battle Stars
- Aspiration
- Answer Me
- Adelina Patti
- The Nuclear Ghost Towns
- The Conditional
- The Ugly Little Bird
- Not A Star
- Mountain Wellhead
- Lightning In The Dark Night Skies
- In The Bus That Is Frantically Rushing From Cairo To Port Said
- Immoral Laboratories
- Hope
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
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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.