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 Alchemist in the City poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Common A-Took In by William Barnes
- The Chant of the Indignant of the World by Sunil Sharma
- Вера Звягинцева – Качаешься в гробу стеклянном
- Year of Meteors, 1859 ’60. by Walt Whitman
- Алексей Толстой – Ушкуйник
- Алексей Толстой – Ты жертва жизненных тревог
- From The Frontier Of Writing by Seamus Heaney
- The Monastery Of Life by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Sonnet 18 poem – John Milton poems
- Colonus’ Praise by William Butler Yeats
- The Princess (prologue) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Mine and Thine by William Morris
- In The Valley Of The Elwy poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Алексей Жемчужников – Ты прав
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
- In the Mile End Road poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- In the Black Forest poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- In September poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- In a Minor Key poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Impotens poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Felo de Se poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Contradictions poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Christopher Found poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Captivity poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Cambridge in the Long poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Borderland poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Between the Showers poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ballade of a Special Edition poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- At Dawn poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- At a Dinner Party poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Wall Flower poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Reminiscence poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Prayer poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A March Day in London poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A London Plane-Tree poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
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.