A poem by Alan Dugan
As an American traveler I have
to remember not to get actionably mad
about the way things are around here.
Tomorrow I’ll be a thousand miles away
from the way it is around here. I will
keep my temper, I will not kill the dog
next door, nor will I kill the next-door wife,
both of whom are crazy and aggressive
and think they live at the center of culture
like everyone else in this college town.
This is because I’m leaving, I’m taking off
by car, by light plane, by jet, by taxicab,
for some place else a thousand miles away,
so I caution myself: control your rage,
even if it causes a slight heart attack.
Stay out of jail tonight before you leave,
and don’t get obstreperous in transit tomorrow
so as to stay out of jail on arrival tomorrow night.
Think: the new handcuffs are sharp inside
and meant to cut the wrists. You’re not too old
to be raped in their filthy overcrowded jails
and you’ll lose your glasses and false teeth.
How would you eat, study and be
a traveling lecturer if you got out alive and sane?
So remember to leave this place peacefully,
it’s only Asshole State University at Nowheresville,
and remember to get to the next place peacefully,
it’s only Nowhere State University at Assholesville
and you must travel from place to place for food and shelter.
A few random poems:
- Fabrication Of Ancestors
- Forbidden Silence by Preeth Nambiar
- Ярослав Смеляков – В защиту домино
- Music’s Empire poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Владимир Луговской – Радость
- Silver Wedding by Vernon Scannell
- The Saint And The Hunchback by William Butler Yeats
- Владимир Британишский – Крепостная интеллигенция
- Михаил Лермонтов – Боюсь не смерти я
- Searching by Mike Yuan
- Джон Мильтон – По случаю своего двадцатитрехлетия
- Федор Сологуб – Снежное поле бесшумно
- Олег Бундур – Разногласия
- The Colored Balloon by Mike Yuan
- Montefiore poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
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
- From An Atlas Of The Difficult World
- From A Survivor
- Fox
- For This
- For The Record
- For The Dead
- Final Notions
- Diving Into The Wreck
- Diving Wreck
- Cartographies Of Silence
- Burning Oneself Out
- Aunt Jennifer039s Tigers
- Aunt Jennifers Tigers
- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
- The Ugly Little Bird
- Poems.html 0
- Mountain Wellhead
- In The Bus That Is Frantically Rushing From Cairo To Port Said
- Youth
- Yasmini
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.