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:
- Father by Philip Levine
- Patience poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sonnet 118: Like as to make our appetite more keen by William Shakespeare
- Oh Unforgotten And Only Lover
- Red Planet Haiku by Thomas J Camp
- Mystic Trumpeter, The. by Walt Whitman
- Fish in the Unruffled Lakes by W H Auden
- Robert Burns: Inscription: Written on the blank leaf of a copy of the last edition of my poems, presented to the Lady whom, in so many fictitious reveries of passion, but with the most ardent sentiments of real friendship, I have so often sung under the name of-“Chloris.”
- Sonnet CXLVI by William Shakespeare
- Михаил Лермонтов – Звуки и взор
- A Man Young And Old: VII. The Friends Of His Youth by William Butler Yeats
- Blow, Bugle, Blow poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Владимир Луговской – Обращение
- Consolation by William Butler Yeats
- Robert Burns: Sweet Tibbie Dunbar:
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
- Leto and Niobe by Sappho
- It’s no use by Sappho
- It was you, Atthis, who said by Sappho
- It is the Muses by Sappho
- It is the Muses by Sappho
- I took my lyre and said by Sappho
- I have no complaint by Sappho
- Hymn To Aphrodite by Sappho
- Hesperus The Bringer by Sappho
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
- Grace by Sappho
- Like the gods. . . by Sappho
- To A Girl In A Garden by Sappho
- Evening by Sappho
- Drapple-thorned Aphrodite, by Sappho
- Dica by Sappho
- Cyprian, in my dream by Sappho
- Claïs by Sappho
- Blame Aphrodite by Sappho
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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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.