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:
- A Sleepless Night by Philip Levine
- Testimony by Seamus Heaney
- Metaphors Of A Magnifico by Wallace Stevens
- Sweet Fire by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- may each find the peace within by Raj Arumugam
- Bicycle Ride by Pat Mullan
- Fragment From Aeschylus
- Complimentary versicles to Jessie Lewars by Robert Burns
- The Last Man by Thomas Campbell
- The Sparrow Club by William Barnes
- Tobias Smollett – Tobias Smollett
- Ghazal 314 by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Urban Caterpillar by Minal Sarosh
- After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics by W. H. Auden
- Mungojerrie And Rumpelteazer by T. S. Eliot
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
- The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky by Vachel Lindsay
- The Moon is a Painter by Vachel Lindsay
- The Merciful Hand by Vachel Lindsay
- The Master of the Dance by Vachel Lindsay
- The Little Turtle by Vachel Lindsay
- The Lion by Vachel Lindsay
- The Light o’ the Moon by Vachel Lindsay
- The Leaden-Eyed by Vachel Lindsay
- The King of Yellow Butterflies by Vachel Lindsay
- The Jingo and the Minstrel by Vachel Lindsay
- The Illinois Village by Vachel Lindsay
- The Hope of the Resurrection by Vachel Lindsay
- The Hearth Eternal by Vachel Lindsay
- The Haughty Snail-King by Vachel Lindsay
- The Ghosts of the Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay
- The Gamblers by Vachel Lindsay
- The Flower of Mending by Vachel Lindsay
- The Flower-Fed Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay
- The Fairy Bridal-Hymn by Vachel Lindsay
- The Empty Boats 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.