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:
- The Book Of The World by William Drummond
- The Senses of Art poem – Ygor Noblott poems | Poetry Monster
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Раздумье
- Владимир Британишский – Молния ударяет
- A Gift poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- An Abandoned Factory, Detroit by Philip Levine
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Гроза
- The Phases Of The Moon by William Butler Yeats
- Юлия Друнина – Я, признаться, сберечь не сумела шинели
- “When the reaper lays the sickle by ” poem – Alfred Austin
- ALL THINGS DECAY AND DIE by Robert Herrick
- The Virgin Martyr
- On Chloris requesting a sprig of blossom’d thorn by Robert Burns
- Fairytale by Nicole M Nugent
- Between going and staying the day wavers by Octavio Paz
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
- ASHA APARTMENTS, 416, S.V. ROAD by Santosh Kumar Panda
- As if by Sara Herlihy
- Amity’s Death by SAAJIDA GORA
- America, America by Saadi Youssef
- A Writer’s Pen by Sahiti Siddharth
- A Traveller’s Guide to the East Indies by S. K. Kelen
- A sense’s addiction to chocolate by SAAJIDA GORA
- A Father’s Hands by Scott Ransopher
- The Unborn by Sharon Olds
- The Space Heater by Sharon Olds
- The Sash by Sharon Olds
- The Pact by Sharon Olds
- The Mortal One by Sharon Olds
- The End by Sharon Olds
- The Daughter Goes To Camp by Sharon Olds
- The Clasp by Sharon Olds
- The Borders by Sharon Olds
- The Arrivals by Sharon Olds
- Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds
- Primitive by Sharon Olds
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.