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:
- Never Give All The Heart by William Butler Yeats
- When the Lad for Longing Sigh poem – A. E. Housman
- Sonnet 56: Sweet love, renew thy force, be it not said by William Shakespeare
- Rain by Shel Silverstein
- A Jog-Trot Pair by Thomas Hardy
- Epitaph On Mr. Bridgeman by William Strode
- The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes
- I Am Just Saying! by Luis Estable
- let’s love the lawn by Raj Arumugam
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Бедняк
- Forty Years Later by Martin Willitts, Jr
- Schoolroom On A Wet Afternoon by Vernon Scannell
- Shrodon Feäir by William Barnes
- Алишер Навои – На лице горит созвездье у красавицы моей
- To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine by William Butler Yeats
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
- women picking edible plants by Raj Arumugan
- what I want to know by Raj Arumugam
- what a poet must do by Raj Arumugam
- was it you, mooon? by Raj Arumugam
- walking with a staff by Raj Arumugam
- The village girl models for the artist, 1904 by Raj Arumugam
- The Discovery of the Kama Sutra by Raj Arumugam
- Taking yourself too seriously by Raj Arumugam
- Sohni and her love Mahinwal by Raj Arumugam
- sadness from the night by Raj Arumugam
- run home, run home butterfly by Raj Arumugam
- Rip van Winkle’s dream by Raj Arumugam
- Revenge of the Ghost of the Betrayed Husband by Raj Arumugam
- Poet Herodia of ancient Pincaeia by Raj Arumugam
- pissed-off cow by Raj Arumugam
- on the edge of the seat by Raj Arumugam
- on our conditioning by Raj Arumugam
- Old Man Poet by Raj Arumugam
- oh no – not another love poem! by Raj Arumugam
- of spiritual matters by Raj Arumugam
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.