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:
- In Praise of Songs that Die by Vachel Lindsay
- Inscription For A Stone Erected At The Sowing Of A Grove Of Oaks At Chillington, Anno 1791 by William Cowper
- The Vrost by William Barnes
- A man toiled on a burning road by Stephen Crane
- A Lady Aurum by Thriveni Mysore
- Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? by William Shakespeare
- Олег Григорьев – Шмель
- Николай Гумилев – Когда спокойно так и равнодушно мы
- Владимир Высоцкий – В Средней Азии безобразие
- Ode On The Pleasure Arising From Vicissitude by Thomas Gray
- Михаил Ломоносов – Чем ты дале прочь отходишь
- Sonnet 36: Let me confess that we two must be twain by William Shakespeare
- forever blue by Steve Troyanovich
- After Our Likeness
- The Fall by Russell Edson
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
- Dews of Silence by Raju Baruah
- Catching the Rain by Raj Napal
- Blame by Raj Napal
- Better Be by Raj Napal
- Be Prepared by Raj Napal
- An empty photo album by Raj Napal
- Your Dog Dies by Raymond Carver
- Written Manna by Rangam Chiru
- What The Doctor Said by Raymond Carver
- Tyburn by Ramesh Anand
- The Scratch by Raymond Carver
- The Passing Cloud by Rashmi Sreekumar
- The Mountain Crumbles by Rashmi
- The Moon’s Truth (before the war) by Reena Ribalow
- The Heart Chirps by Ramesh Anand
- The Current by Raymond Carver
- The Cobweb by Raymond Carver
- The Best Time Of The Day by Raymond Carver
- Stupid by Raymond Carver
- Still Life by Reena Ribalow
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.