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:
- Gwain To Feäir by William Barnes
- The Welcome
- Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney
- Love Sonnet LIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- I closed my eyes to creation by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- The Fiddler Of Dooney by William Butler Yeats
- English Poetry. Thomas Moore. From “The Odes of Anacreon”. Ode 66. Томас Мур.
- A Lover From Palestine by Mahmoud Darwish
- Зинаида Александрова – Давайте, девочки, купаться
- Sad-Eyed and Soft and Grey by William Morris
- Яков Полонский – На закате
- Низами Гянджеви – Искендер-наме – Страница 15 из 15
- Great are the Myths. by Walt Whitman
- Under Cover of Night by Robert Desnos
- Show It At The Beach by Shel Silverstein
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
- Vorticism Is A Choka In Its Modular Home
- Violets Beauty Passing
- Victor
- Untitled
- Traveling
- Tracks In The Private Country
- Thoughts Religious Content
- The World
- The Sacred Tree
- The Poet And Imagination
- The Holy Tree
- The Emigrant
- Tears
- Simple Heart
- Silence
- She
- Sealed Appropriate
- Seal
- Sea Salt A Villanelle
- Salamis Quot
More external links (open in a new tab):
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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.