Alan Dugan

Here you will find the Poem Fabrication Of Ancestors of poet Alan Dugan

Fabrication Of Ancestors

For old Billy Dugan, shot in the ass in the Civil War, my father said.

The old wound in my ass 
has opened up again, but I 
am past the prodigies 
of youth?s campaigns, and weep 
where I used to laugh 
in war?s red humors, half 
in love with silly-assed pains 
and half not feeling them. 
I have to sit up with 
an indoor unsittable itch 
before I go down late 
and weeping to the storm- 
cellar on a dirty night 
and go to bed with the worms. 
So pull the dirt up over me 
and make a family joke 
for Old Billy Blue Balls, 
the oldest private in the world 
with two ass-holes and no 
place more to go to for a laugh 
except the last one. Say: 
The North won the Civil War 
without much help from me 
although I wear a proof 
of the war?s obscenity.