Remembering An Account Executive

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.

Poetry Monster – Home

A few random poems:

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 

• A Paralell Between Bowling And Preferment by William Strode by William Strode
• A New Year’s Gift by William Strode by William Strode
• A Necklace by William Strode by William Strode
• A Lover To His Mistress by William Strode by William Strode
• A Girdle by William Strode by William Strode
• Yesterday by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• Wish by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• Whenever I Go There by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• When You Go Away by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• Vehicles by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• Unknown Bird by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• The Speed Of Light by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• The Source by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• The River Of Bees by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• The Burnt Child by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• Term by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• Some Last Questions by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin
• On the Subject of Poetry by W. S. Merwin by William Stanley Merwin

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

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

Poems by Author and Category

The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works