Swing Shift Blues

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.

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 

• Conversation Among The Ruins by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Circus In Three Rings by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Child’s Park Stones by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• “Célibataire” by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• By Candlelight by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Burning The Letters by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Bluebeard by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Black Rook In Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Black Pine Tree In An Orange Light by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Battle-Scene From the Comic Operatic Fantasy The Seafarer by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Balloons by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Ariel by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Apprehensions by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• An Appearance by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Amnesiac by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• All The Dead Dears by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Aftermath by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Admonition by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Above The Oxbow by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath

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