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 

• Infelix by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Hemlock Furrows by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Genius by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Fragment by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Dying by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Dreams Beauty by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Depths by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Battle Stars by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Aspiration by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Answer Me by Adah Isaacs Menken
• Adelina Patti by Adah Isaacs Menken
• The Nuclear Ghost Towns by Poetry In English
• The Conditional by Poetry In English
• The Ugly Little Bird by Poetry In English
• Not A Star by Poetry In English
• Mountain Wellhead by Poetry In English
• Lightning In The Dark Night Skies by Poetry In English
• In The Bus That Is Frantically Rushing From Cairo To Port Said by Poetry In English
• Immoral Laboratories by Poetry In English
• Hope by Poetry In English

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