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:
- Федор Сологуб – Зачем, скажи
- Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- What am I, After All? by Walt Whitman
- Father Divine poem – A. D. Winans poems | Poetry Monster
- If The World Was Crazy by Shel Silverstein
- Off the Ground by Walter de la Mare
- Robert Burns: The Twa Herds; Or, The Holy Tulyie: An Unco Mournfu’ Tale
- On the Danger of Procrastination by Abraham Cowley
- Hyla Brook by Robert Frost
- Нина Гаген-Торн – Возвращение
- Кондратий Рылеев – Меня пленяли наши деды
- Dying
- The Childless Father by William Wordsworth
- Late Light by Philip Levine
- A New Heaven (To-On Active Service) by Wilfred Owen
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
- Огюст Барбье – Лев
- Огюст Барбье – Леонардо да Винчи
- Огюст Барбье – Кьяйя
- Огюст Барбье – Котел
- Огюст Барбье – Корреджо
- Огюст Барбье – Кола ди Риенци
- Огюст Барбье – Известность
- Огюст Барбье – Идол
- Огюст Барбье – Эпилог
- Огюст Барбье – Джульетта милая
- Огюст Барбье – Джин
- Огюст Барбье – Дант
- Огюст Барбье – Чимароза
- Огюст Барбье – Бук
- Огюст Барбье – Берега моря
- Огюст Барбье – Барабанщик Барра
- Огюст Барбье – Аллегри
- Новелла Матвеева – Закон песен
- Новелла Матвеева – Я, говорит, не воин
- Новелла Матвеева – Художник, незнакомый с поощреньем
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.