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:
- Winter Landscape poem – John Betjeman poems
- The Tour by Sylvia Plath
- Of Love and All by Raja Mannar
- The Benefactors by Rudyard Kipling
- Константин Ваншенкин – Городские костры
- Алексей Жемчужников – Современному гражданину
- Sonnet Iv
- The Sons of Martha by Rudyard Kipling
- Meditation With Feet
- Upon The Sight Of A Beautiful Picture Painted By Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart by William Wordsworth
- To – – – – –
- The Falling Of The Leaves by William Butler Yeats
- Владимир Высоцкий – Купола
- My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer by Mark Strand
- English Poetry. Thomas Moore. From “Irish Melodies”. 103. The Mountain Spite. Томас Мур.
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
- The Little Boy And The Old Man by Shel Silverstein
- The Land Of Happy by Shel Silverstein
- The Hunter by Shel Silverstein
- The Great Conch Train Robbery by Shel Silverstein
- The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
- The Generals by Shel Silverstein
- The Bridge by Shel Silverstein
- The Boa Constrictor Song by Shel Silverstein
- The Bear, The Fire, And The Snow by Shel Silverstein
- The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan by Shel Silverstein
- The Bagpipe Who Didn’t Say No by Shel Silverstein
- Testing The Bomb by Shel Silverstein
- Sylvia’s Mother by Shel Silverstein
- Sure Hit Songwriter’s Pen by Shel Silverstein
- Son Of A Scoundrel by Shel Silverstein
- Someone Ate The Baby by Shel Silverstein
- Someday’s Here by Shel Silverstein
- Somebody Has To by Shel Silverstein
- Smoke Off by Shel Silverstein
- Sing Me A Rainbow by Shel Silverstein
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.