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: Monody: On a lady famed for her Caprice.
- Crossing The Water by Sylvia Plath
- The Aquittal Of Phryne poem – Alfred Austin
- An Ode to Beer
- The Bull Moose
- Robert Burns: Election Ballad For Westerha’:
- Youth And Age by William Butler Yeats
- Happy Teacher’s Day by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Blue Roses by Rudyard Kipling
- The Uses of the Eye by Paul Blackburn
- I Can Feel The Same by Miraj Patel
- Владимир Вологдин – Не играйте, мальчики, в войну
- The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt) poem – Alexander Pope
- Николай Заболоцкий – Детство
- In Every Direction by Ralph Angel
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
- Oonts by Rudyard Kipling
- One Viceroy Resigns by Rudyard Kipling
- Natural Theology by Rudyard Kipling
- My Rival by Rudyard Kipling
- My New-Cut Ashler by Rudyard Kipling
- My Lady’s Law by Rudyard Kipling
- My Boy Jack by Rudyard Kipling
- Mulholland’s Contract by Rudyard Kipling
- Mowgli’s Song Against People by Rudyard Kipling
- Mowgli’s Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Mother o’ Mine by Rudyard Kipling
- Morning Song in the Jungle by Rudyard Kipling
- Mine Sweepers by Rudyard Kipling
- Mesopotamia by Rudyard Kipling
- Merrow Down by Rudyard Kipling
- Mary’s Son by Rudyard Kipling
- Mary, Pity Women! by Rudyard Kipling
- Many Inventions by Rudyard Kipling
- Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling
- Lukannon by Rudyard Kipling
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.