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:
- Topiary poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- 我的妻子。 安德烈·布勒東一首關於自由戀愛的詩
- Selecting A Reader by Ted Kooser
- Love’s Blindness poem – Alfred Austin
- Шекспир – Ты утоляешь мой голодный взор – Сонет 75
- The Galley-Slave by Rudyard Kipling
- The Sun Of The First Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- In Hardwood Groves by Robert Frost
- Владимир Корнилов – Анафемский сон
- Exodus Of The Heart by Wilmer Escovar
- The Brook poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Ageing Schoolmaster by Vernon Scannell
- I Do Not Love Thee For That Fair by Thomas Carew
- Юнна Мориц – Мой подвал
- A Poet I knew by Martin Zakovski
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
- Never Sure Which You Are by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Important thing’s in life by Martin Smith
- Nestling by Mark R Slaughter
- Images by Mary Etta Metcalf
- My Words Embrace by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Illusions by Mark R Slaughter
- My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer by Mark Strand
- If Only by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Morning by Mark R Slaughter
- I, or Someone Like Me by Marvin Bell
- Mending Socks by Martin Willitts Jr.
- He Said To by Marvin Bell
- Grumpy Old Man by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Manure by Mark R Slaughter
- Giving Myself Up by Mark Strand
- Mammary Tunes by Mark R Slaughter
- Ghosts by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Lines For Winter by Mark Strand
- From The Long Sad Party by Mark Strand
- Life, wait for me by Martin Zakovski
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.