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:
- Ballades III – Of Blue China poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Knoxville Tennessee by Nikki Giovanni
- Seeking Beauty by William Henry Davies
- The Fool By The Roadside by William Butler Yeats
- Tithonus
- Такахама Кёси – Кончик трости моей
- Point Shirley by Sylvia Plath
- The Conjugation of the Paramecium by Muriel Rukeyser
- The Commitment by Rob Leatherman Sr.
- Meditation by Radames Antonio Cruz
- Robert Burns: Raging Fortune:
- Two Or Three: A Recipe To Make A Cuckold poem – Alexander Pope
- Олег Григорьев – Я взял бумагу и перо
- Nevertheless by Marianne Moore
- September
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
- A Wasted Illness by Thomas Hardy
- A Thunderstorm In Town by Thomas Hardy
- A Jog-Trot Pair by Thomas Hardy
- A Dream Or No by Thomas Hardy
- Ye Mariners of England by Thomas Campbell
- To the Evening Star by Thomas Campbell
- The Last Man by Thomas Campbell
- The Dirge of Wallace by Thomas Campbell
- The Battle of the Baltic by Thomas Campbell
- Song to the Evening Star by Thomas Campbell
- Ode to Winter by Thomas Campbell
- Ode to the Memory of Burns by Thomas Campbell
- Love And Madness by Thomas Campbell
- Lord Ullin’s Daughter by Thomas Campbell
- Hohenlinden by Thomas Campbell
- Gertrude of Wyoming by Thomas Campbell
- Freedom And Love by Thomas Campbell
- Benlomond by Thomas Campbell
- Adelgitha by Thomas Campbell
- The Resignation by Thomas Chatterton
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.