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:
- Archaic Torso Of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke
- To Death poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Exit by Rita Dove
- When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30) by William Shakespeare
- Wisteria by Philip Levine
- The Weepen Leady by William Barnes
- Piera Chen – Piera Chen
- Низами Гянджеви – О милый друг, давно пленен я
- Нина Воронель – Московский день
- Moonrise poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
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- Tides by Sara Teasdale
- The Withering Of The Boughs by William Butler Yeats
- Easter Communion poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Gentlmen-Rankers 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
- Set out by Mahak Raithatha S
- Rita And The Rifle by Mahmoud Darwish
- Psalm Three by Mahmoud Darwish
- Psalm 9 by Mahmoud Darwish
- Pride and Fury by Mahmoud Darwish
- Postip by Manolo Arriola
- Poema LX, El albergue by Mara Romero Torres
- Poema II, “Pañuelos de La Alhambra” by Mara Romero Torres
- Pequeña niña mía by Mara Romero Torres
- Passport by Mahmoud Darwish
- Pañuelos de La Alhambra by Mara Romero Torres
- Ontological by Maggie Anderson
- Only Iraq by Mahmoud Darwish
- Oh My Father, I am Yusif by Mahmoud Darwish
- October Journey by Margaret Walker
- Nube by Manolo Arriola
- No Matter What You Write by Mac McGovern
- Neighing at the Slope by Mahmoud Darwish
- My Mother by Mahmoud Darwish
- For My People by Margaret Walker
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.