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.

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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
- Failure by Rupert Brooke
- Dust by Rupert Brooke
- Doubts by Rupert Brooke
- Dining-Room Tea by Rupert Brooke
- Desertion by Rupert Brooke
- Dead Men’s Love by Rupert Brooke
- Day That I Have Loved by Rupert Brooke
- Day And Night by Rupert Brooke
- Dawn by Rupert Brooke
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- Choriambics — II by Rupert Brooke
- Choriambics — I by Rupert Brooke
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- Busy Heart, The by Rupert Brooke
- Blue Evening by Rupert Brooke
- Beauty and Beauty by Rupert Brooke
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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.