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:
- Home After Three Months Away by Robert Lowell
- Владимир Маяковский – Селькор
- We know this much by Sappho
- Whoever You are, Holding Me now in Hand. by Walt Whitman
- The Bowling-Green by William Somervile
- from The Tenth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Владимир Высоцкий – Нет меня, я покинул Расею
- Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden
- Maple by Robert Frost
- An Ode To Antares
- Growltiger’s Last Stand by T. S. Eliot
- Sonnet 15 poem – John Milton poems
- Scoring Highly on the Psychopathy Scale by P.J.Reed
- Николай Рубцов – Ветер всхлипывал, словно дитя
- Robert Burns: Had I The Wyte? She Bade Me:
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
- SOMALIA CALLING by Satish Verma
- Solitudes by Satish Verma
- SNAKE CHARMING by Satish Verma
- Smiling Buddha by Satish Verma
- Singing Darkness by Satish Verma
- Sin and Prayer by Satish Verma
- Silver Trails by Satish Verma
- Sidelined by Satish Verma
- Shimmering by Satish Verma
- SELF-WATCH by Satish Verma
- Searing Heat by Satish Verma
- SCULPTURING by Satish Verma
- SCARY DANCE by Satish Verma
- REVOLT OF A SUTRA by Satish Verma
- REGENERATING by Satish Verma
- REFLECTING THE PRAISES by Satish Verma
- PURE STEEL by Satish Verma
- PROGNOSIS by Satish Verma
- PRESCIENCE by Satish Verma
- Praying Hurriedly by Satish Verma
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.