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:
- Robert Burns: The Inventory: In answer to a mandate by the Surveyor of the Taxes
- Teenager by Patrick Connors
- Нина Воронель – Вечная мерзлота
- The Lighted Window by Sara Teasdale
- Стефан Малларме – Появление
- Владимир Маяковский – Победой увенчав Октябрьский бой… (Главполитпросвет №364)
- The Effect by Siegfried Sassoon
- Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour by Wallace Stevens
- On The Benefit Received By His Majesty From Sea-Bathing, In The Year 1789 by William Cowper
- Preludes by T. S. Eliot
- Николай Заболоцкий – Я не ищу гармонии в природе
- An Honest Poet’s Life Is Full Of Care by Malcolm Massiah
- Soulmating by Mike Yuan
- Sonnet 50: How heavy do I journey on the way by William Shakespeare
- England! The Time Is Come When Thou Should’st Wean by William Wordsworth
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
- For Birds by Nithin Purple
- Flying Wishes by Osman cisse Hanif
- Femme Fatale by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Eye By Eye by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Evening by Olivia Lewis
- E-waste by Nisha Gopalakrishnan
- Dreamtime by Olivia Lewis
- Death Divine by Nithin Purple
- Dead Orchard by Nijole Miliauskaite
- CloSe To My Heart by Nishant Deherkar
- Children’s Taste by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Cambodian Flower by Norma Martiri
- Burnt in contemplation by Nishant Deherkar
- The Bonifratrian Hospital by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Blank by Nizar Sartawi
- Between Two Moments by Nizar Sartawi
- Between going and staying the day wavers by Octavio Paz
- Basic Overhaul by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Aquamarine Butterfly by Nina Gabriel
- An Elegy On The Glory Of Her Sex, Mrs Mary Blaize by Oliver Goldsmith
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)
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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.