A poem by Alan Dugan
He had a back office in his older brother’s
advertising agency and understood the human asshole.
He turned his father’s small inheritance over and over
on hemorrhoid ads between three-hour lunches
at the Plaza every day and cocktails at five-thirty
with different dressy women waiting in our front office.
We joked that he fucked them up the ass to make more customers
and were nauseated by him because he picked his ears
with the lead end of his lead pencil as he argued and argued
hemorrhoid copy with us on nauseating Mad. Ave. mornings.
Why argue? It must have been for executive power-feelings
because the copy never changed. Every week, the poor
bleeding assholes bought the shit. When my mind
began to get fucked and go as black as his inner ears
I quit as broke as I began, remembering his prophecy:
that the last working television set in the world
would be showing a hemorrhoid ad for ANUSALL
at Armageddon, that it would have been written
by him, that he would be watching it at 6:00 P.M.
in the bomb-cellar lounge of the Park Plaza Hotel
with a blonde’s ass in one hand and a scotch in the other,
and that he would die happy, with his old man’s
money intact and his asshole too, unlike us prat-boys.
A few random poems:
- Far Pitched Tents: Poems of War by Michael Nikoletseas
- Feast of the Eyes
- The Bridge by Russell Edson
- Оливер Голдсмит – Пыл упований людям дан
- Youth And The Pilgrim by Sara Teasdale
- Новелла Матвеева – Отражённым светом
- Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Распутие
- The Methodist by Thomas Chatterton
- A Melody By Scarlatti
- Poet’s Corner poem – Alfred Austin
- Иван Дмитриев – Смерть и Умирающий
- A Fable by William Cowper
- Robert Burns: O Let Me In Thes Ae Night:
- Catching the Rain by Raj Napal
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
- Answers by Mark Strand
- And The Black Scythe With Its Beak of Ibis by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- After Forever by Mark Miller
- A World So Different by Mary Etta Metcalf
- A Poet I knew by Martin Zakovski
- A Piece Of The Storm by Mark Strand
- A Photograph on the Desk by Mary Etta Metcalf
- A Misty Morning by Mary Etta Mietcalf
- A Cozy Little Room by Mary Etta Metcalf
- À ce point du voyage by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- A Dream of Rodney King by Mary TallMountain
- You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop by Marge Piercy
- Yell of Pain by Maria Ivana Trevisani Bach
- Year’s End by Marilyn Hacker
- Winter Promises by Marge Piercy
- What Are Big Girls Made Of? by Marge Piercy
- Visiting a Dead Man on a Summer Day by Marge Piercy
- Upon Julia’s Breast by Marie Starr
- Unloved, unmoved by Maria Jastine Golo
- Twas’ the Night Before Christmas and Santa got Drunk by Margaret Marie Hubbard
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.