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:
- Of You by Philo Ikonya
 - Lines Inscribed in a Lady’s Pocket Almanack by Robert Burns
 - Robert Burns: Epitaph On A Lap-Dog Named Echo:
 - Wonderment by Siegfried Sassoon
 - The Lady’s Second Song by William Butler Yeats
 - The Benefactors Of The Little Box by Vasko Popa
 - Robert Burns: My Girl She’s Airy: Fragment
 - Essay on Man poem – Alexander Pope
 - Michaelangelo by Vachel Lindsay
 - Meeting with Te Rauparaha by Michael O’Leary
 - Валерий Брюсов – Это матовым вечером мая
 - Aunt Helen by T. S. Eliot
 - Владимир Костров – Срок настал, московская богема
 - The Cobweb by Raymond Carver
 - My teacher wasn’t half as nice as yours seems to be by Roald Dahl
 
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
- Ballade Of Roulette poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of Queen Anne poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of Old Plays poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of Worldly Wealth poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of True Wisdom poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Voyage To Cythera poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Tweed poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Summer Term poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Southern Cross poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Royal Game Of Golf poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Muse poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Midnight Forest poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Dream poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Dead Cities poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of The Bookworm poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of Sleep poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of Roulette poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of Queen Anne poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of Old Plays poem – Andrew Lang poems
 - Ballade Of His Books poem – Andrew Lang poems
 
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.