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:
- Blemishes by Satish Verma
- I See so Deeply Within Myself by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Sunday Morning Blues poem – A. D. Winans poems | Poetry Monster
- Gwaïn Down The Steps Vor Water by William Barnes
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 01 – part 06 by Torquato Tasso
- Омар Хайям – О, кумир, Дружбу ты почему прервала
- Аля Кудряшева – Если ты, к примеру, кролик с шелковистыми ушами
- 1991-I by Wendell Berry
- Владимир Маяковский – С Польшей подписан мир… (РОСТА №428)
- Start Growing by Rixa White
- Gratitude, Addressed To Lady Hesketh by William Cowper
- Георгий Иванов – Там, над Невой зеленоватой
- Farewell
- The Passing Cloud by Rashmi Sreekumar
- Илья Эренбург – Я бы мог прожить совсем иначе
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
- Yasmini
- Yasin Khan
- Written In Cananore
- Wings
- When Love Is Over
- Verses
- Verses Faiz Ulla
- Verse By Taj Mahomed
- Vayu The Wind
- Valgovinds Song In The Spring
- Valgovinds Boat Song
- Unforgotten
- Unanswered
- Two Songs By Sitara Of Kashmir
- To The Unattainable
- To The Unattainable Lament Of Mahomed Akram
- To The Hills
- To M C N
- To Aziz Song Of Mahomed Akram
- Till I Wake
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
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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.