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:
- A Spring Carol poem – Alfred Austin
- Memoriam A. H. H.: 72. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Bivouac on a Mountain Side. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Не трать огня напрасных убеждений
- Sail Away by Rabindranath Tagore
- “Goldie Pinklesweet…” by Roald Dahl
- Sonnet 150: O from what power hast thou this powerful might by William Shakespeare
- Алексей Плещеев – Тобой лишь ясны дни мои
- from The Tenth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Darkness poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Other by Sylvia Plath
- Степан Щипачев – Обращение к времени
- The Triumph by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Chanpa Flower by Rabindranath Tagore
- A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey’s Ears, and Some Books by Robert Frost
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
- Nominalism Is A Liquid Kuhi
- My Mother’s Grief
- If Truth In Hearts That Perish
- I Havent Betrayed You My Hometown
- Eclipse Of Love
- Divided Passion
- Death039s Claim
- Dear Bhikkhu A Eulogy
- As With A Senryu S Hardening Ridge
- A Gogyohka And The Forgotten Panopticon
- A Faded Postcard Is A Tanka Daydream
- The Dead Woman poem – Pablo Neruda
- If Truth in Hearts That Perish poem – A. E. Housman
- Fragment of a Greek Tragedy poem – A. E. Housman
- Diffugere Nives poem – A. E. Housman
- Water Strider
- The Infernal Regions
- Honeycomb
- Dark Matter
- Wet City Night
More external links (open in a new tab):
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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.