A poem by Alan Dugan
What is better than leaving a bar
in the middle of the afternoon
besides staying in it or not
having gone into it in the first place
because you had a decent woman to be with?
The air smells particularly fresh
after the stale beer and piss smells.
You can stare up at the whole sky:
it’s blue and white and does not
stare back at you like the bar mirror,
and there’s Whats-‘is-name coming out
right behind you saying, “I don’t
believe it, I don’t believe it: there
he is, staring up at the fucking sky
with his mouth open. Don’t
you realize, you stupid son of a bitch,
that it is a quarter to four
and we have to clock in in
fifteen minutes to go to work?”
So we go to work and do no work
and can even breathe in the Bull’s face
because he’s been into the other bar
that we don’t go to when he’s there.

A few random poems:
- Владимир Высоцкий – Говорят, лезу прямо под нож
- A Blockhead poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- It Takes a While to Disappear by Ralph Angel
- Николай Языков – Элегия (День ненастный, темный; тучи)
- The Little Box by Vasko Popa
- Columns by Rudyard Kipling
- Dialogue Between a Sovereign and a One-Pound Note by Thomas Moore
- Владимир Британишский – Дом (Время ведь с годами ведь)
- Weak Is The Will Of Man, His Judgement Blind by William Wordsworth
- Вера Павлова – Праздник после праздника
- Lines to John M’Murdo of Drumlanrig by Robert Burns
- Lover’s Gifts XLIV: Where Is Heaven by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Высоцкий – Марш аквалангистов
- Шекспир – Ты утоляешь мой голодный взор – Сонет 75
- In the End by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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
- Sonnet I
- Sonnet 12
- Sonnet 11
- Sonnet 10
- Sonnet 08
- Sonnet 07
- Sonnet 06
- Sonnet 05
- Sonnet 04
- Sonnet 03
- Sonnet 02
- Sonnet 01
- Resurgam
- Rendezvous
- On The Cliffs Newport
- On A Theme In The Greek Anthology
- Ode In Memory Of The American Volunteers Fallen For France
- Maktoob
- Lyonesse
- Liebestod
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.