A poem by Alan Dugan
He smelled bad and was red-eyed with the miseries
of being scared while sleepless when he said
this: “I want a private woman, peace and quiet,
and some green stuff in my pocket. Fuck
the rest.” Pity the underwear and socks,
long burnt, of an accomplished murderer,
oh God, of germans and replacements, who
refused three stripes to keep his B.A.R.,
who fought, fought not to fight some days
like any good small businessman of war,
and dug more holes than an outside dog
to modify some Freudian’s thesis: “No
man can stand three hundred days
of fear of mutilation and death.” What he
theorized was a joke: “To keep a tight
asshole, dry socks and a you-deep hole
with you at all times.” Afterwards,
met in a sports shirt with a round wife, he was
the clean slave of a daughter, a power brake
and beer. To me, he seemed diminished
in his dream, or else enlarged, who knows?,
by its accomplishment: personal life
wrung from mass issues in a bloody time
and lived out hiddenly. Aside from sound
baseball talk, his only interesting remark
was, in pointing to his wife’s belly, “If
he comes out left foot first” (the way
you Forward March!), “I am going to stuff
him back up.” “Isn’t he awful?” she said.

A few random poems:
- Владимир Британишский – Тропа виляла
- Ship Starting, The. by Walt Whitman
- Under the Greenwood Tree by William Shakespeare
- To Songs At the Marriage Of The Lord Fauconberg And The Lady Mary Cromwell poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Валерий Брюсов – К.А. Коровину (Душа твоя, быть может, ослепительней)
- Towards Break Of Day by William Butler Yeats
- Landowners by Sylvia Plath
- And ask ye why these sad tears stream? poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Sonnet. Written Upon The Top Of Ben Nevis poem – John Keats poems
- Sonnet Vii
- Юлия Друнина – Верность
- Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore by William Shakespeare
- Scots Prologue for Mr. Sutherland by Robert Burns
- Little Clock by T. Wignesan
- Ольга Берггольц – 27 января 1945 года
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 Story Of Our Lives by Mark Strand
- The Self and the Mulberry by Marvin Bell
- Your Poems on My Patio by Martina Reisz Newberry
- The Room by Mark Strand
- Yesterday’s Mishaps by Mary Etta Metcalf
- The River Has Its Memories by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Yes Dear by Mary Etta Metcalf
- The River by Mark Olynyk
- Words Unspoken by Mark Olynyk
- The Remains by Mark Strand
- Woman With Parasol by Martin Willitts Jr.
- The Poetic Principle by Mark Olynyk
- Why Write? by Mark Olynyk
- The Other Side of Panic by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Where Have We All Gone by Mary Etta Metcalf
- The joyful things in life by Martin Smith
- What is Poetry? by Mark Olynyk
- The Frantic by Mark Miller
- Wednesday by Marvin Bell
- The End of the Argument by Martina Reisz Newberry
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.