Portrait From The Infantry

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.

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Poems in English 

• Reproof: A Satire. by Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• Tobias Smollett – Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• Love Elegy (in imitation of Tibullus) by Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• “Let the nymph still avoid and be deaf to the swain” by Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• To Independence by Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• “From the man whom I love, though my heart I disguise,” by Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• “Come listen, ye students of every degree” by Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• Blue-Eyed Ann by Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• Advice: A Satire. by Tobias Smollett by Tobias Smollett
• You Will Forget! by Timothy Thomas Fortune by Poetry In English
• Words Of Love Forevermore by Timothy Thomas Fortune by Poetry In English
• What Is Woman But A Song! by Timothy Thomas Fortune by Poetry In English
• The Squirrel by Todd H. C. Fischer by Poetry In English
• The Pulling Away by Timothy Cole by Poetry In English
• The moon at noon by Tom Mukasa by Poetry In English
• The Leather Suitcase by Tom Berman by Poetry In English
• The Mocking Bird by Timothy Thomas Fortune by Poetry In English
• The Heart That Is Pining by Timothy Thomas Fortune by Poetry In English
• The Clime Of My Birth by Timothy Thomas Fortune by Poetry In English
• The Bird Has Vanished by Timothy Thomas Fortune by Poetry In English

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