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.

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Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

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Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh

Poems in English 

• Twenty-Four Hokku On A Modern Theme poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Travelling Bear poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Towns in Colour poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• To-Morrow To Fresh Woods And Pastures New poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• To A Husband poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Travelling Bear poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Swans poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Starling poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Pond poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Poet poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Letter poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Great Adventure Of Max Breuck poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Garden By Moonlight poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Dinner-Party poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Cremona Violin poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Country House poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• The Artist poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Prayer For Lightning poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Prayer For A Profusion Of Sunflowers poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell
• Orange Of Midsummer poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry by Amy Lowell

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.

 

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