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:
- On Being A Householder
- Eidólons. by Walt Whitman
- A Song at Cock-Crow by Rudyard Kipling
- Endymion: Book II poem – John Keats poems
- He Hears The Cry Of The Sedge by William Butler Yeats
- A Japanese Wood-Carving poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ольга Берггольц – Надежда
- Words Of Advice by Ronald G. Auguste
- The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt) poem – Alexander Pope
- To My Brother George poem – John Keats poems
- Вера Павлова – Покамест я всем детям тётя
- Head of a Smiling Young Woman in Three-Quarter View by Raj Arumugam
- Владимир Высоцкий – Жан, Жак, Гийом, Густав нормальные французы
- “Could I but leave men wiser by my song ” poem – Alfred Austin
- My Garden by Sappho
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 Song by Thomas Carew
- A prayer to the Wind by Thomas Carew
- A Divine Mistress by Thomas Carew
- A Cruel Mistress. by Thomas Carew
- Specula by Thomas Edward Brown
- Salve! by Thomas Edward Brown
- Risus Dei by Thomas Edward Brown
- Pain by Thomas Edward Brown
- Opifex by Thomas Edward Brown
- My Garden by Thomas Edward Brown
- Land, Ho! by Thomas Edward Brown
- Jessie by Thomas Edward Brown
- If Thou Could’st Empty All Thyself Of Self by Thomas Edward Brown
- Ibant Obscur? by Thomas Edward Brown
- I bended unto me a Bough by Thomas Edward Brown
- Dora by Thomas Edward Brown
- Disguises by Thomas Edward Brown
- Time of Roses by Thomas Hood
- Tim Turpin by Thomas Hood
- The World is with Me by Thomas Hood
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.