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:
- Love Sonnet XVII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- The Voice by Sara Teasdale
- The General by Siegfried Sassoon
- Tis Time, I Think, By Wenlock Town poem – A. E. Housman
- The Nuclear Ghost Towns
- Winter by Shaunna Harper
- Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Валерий Брюсов – Песня гренландцев
- A-Haulen O’ The Corn by William Barnes
- Prospect by Sylvia Plath
- Security by William Stafford
- Владимир Степанов – Подберёзовик и подосиновик
- Threshold by Rabindranath Tagore
- Robert Burns: Epistle To John Maxwell, ESQ., Of Terraughty : On His Birthday.
- The Cloak, The Boat And The Shoes by William Butler Yeats
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
- What the Sexton Said by Vachel Lindsay
- What the Rattlesnake Said by Vachel Lindsay
- What the Moon Saw by Vachel Lindsay
- What the Miner in the Desert Said by Vachel Lindsay
- What the Gray-Winged Fairy Said by Vachel Lindsay
- What the Ghost of the Gambler Said by Vachel Lindsay
- What the Coal-Heaver Said by Vachel Lindsay
- What Semiramis Said by Vachel Lindsay
- The Trap by Vachel Lindsay
- The Tale of the Tiger-Tree by Vachel Lindsay
- The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly by Vachel Lindsay
- The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit by Vachel Lindsay
- The Song of the Garden-Toad by Vachel Lindsay
- The Scissors-Grinder by Vachel Lindsay
- The Rose of Midnight by Vachel Lindsay
- The Raft by Vachel Lindsay
- The Proud Farmer by Vachel Lindsay
- The Prarie Battlements by Vachel Lindsay
- The Perfect Marriage by Vachel Lindsay
- The Mysterious Cat by Vachel Lindsay
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.