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 Stars Are Mansions Built By Nature’s Hand by William Wordsworth
- The Instructor by Rudyard Kipling
- Валерий Брюсов – Из детской книжки
- Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland, 1803 XII. Yarrow Unvisited by William Wordsworth
- The Gardener XXXVIII: My Love, Once upon a Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- With All Thy Gifts. by Walt Whitman
- Love’s Blindness poem – Alfred Austin
- Come up from the Fields, Father. by Walt Whitman
- A Prayer poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Высоцкий – Долго же шёл ты, в конверте листок
- Spanish Johnny by Willa Sibert Cather
- Look not in my eyes, for fear poem – A. E. Housman
- Владимир Высоцкий – Шляпник
- Robert Burns: Remorseful Apology:
- Farmer’s Son by William Barnes
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
- Psalm 08 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 07 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 06 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 05 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 04 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 03 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 02 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 01 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Regained: The Third Book poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Regained: The Second Book poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Regained: The First Book poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 12 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 11 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 10 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 09 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 08 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 07 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 06 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 05 poem – John Milton 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.