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:
- Thanatos Basileos poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Two Stranger Birds in Our Feathers by Mahmoud Darwish
- Robert Burns: Stanzas On Naething: Extempore Epistle to Gavin Hamilton, Esq.
- I saw Old General at Bay. by Walt Whitman
- Гавриил Державин – Храповицкому (Храповицкий! дружбы знаки)
- At The Close Of The Canvass poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Botanically by Satish Verma
- Вергилий – Скопа
- Passion For Light
- Владимир Маяковский – Рабочий корреспондент
- Юнна Мориц – Приход вдохновения
- A Tale, Founded On A Fact, Which Happened In January, 1779 by William Cowper
- Жан де Лафонтен – Человек и его Изображение
- Sonnet 08
- Sleeping for Kafka by Nin Andrews
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
- Анатолий Жигулин – Кукует поздняя кукушка
- Анатолий Жигулин – Кострожоги
- Анатолий Жигулин – Кордон Песчаный
- Анатолий Жигулин – Коломенское
- Анатолий Жигулин – Кладбище в Заполярье
- Анатолий Жигулин – Калина
- Анатолий Жигулин – Из больничной тетради
- Анатолий Жигулин – Иду в полях
- Анатолий Жигулин – Гулко эхо от ранних шагов
- Анатолий Жигулин – Горят сырые листья
- Анатолий Жигулин – Где теперь ты, рыжая
- Анатолий Жигулин – Эпоха
- Анатолий Жигулин – Дорога
- Анатолий Жигулин – Деревья с черными грачами
- Анатолий Жигулин – Дальние предки
- Анатолий Жигулин – Цветы сажают в торф
- Анатолий Жигулин – Черные листья осины
- Анатолий Жигулин – Бросаю в воду хлеб
- Анатолий Жигулин – Береза
- Анатолий Жигулин – Белый-белый торжественный снег
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.