Francis Duggan Poems

It is a flat old countryside of paddocks brown and bare
Where houses are not many and trees and bushes rare
And mixed flocks of straw neck and white ibis in large numbers do abound
With their long bills they probe for slugs and worms in the soft patches of ground
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You feel life is a battle and you are doing it tough
But you have never been homeless and you have never slept rough
You are what you think you are or make yourself out to be
And you must be very poor if you think you are that is how it seems to me
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Of terrorists and asylum seekers they like to broadcast fear
And they tell the voting public what most voters want to hear
The government and opposition for the votes of redneck voters compete
The gullible are many and are open to deceit
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Not a pleasant octogenarian she is quite a cranky old dear
But life she is determined to cling to she surely will not die this year
A decade ago her husband left her which has become her reason for disliking men
Now happily married to a younger woman he says he escaped the lioness den
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When to the ways of the world i was young and green
I left Millstreet and went to live and work in New York when i was eighteen
The wanderlust was in me even as a younger man
But back then i was young and healthy and full of youthful elan
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If in the laws of Karma you believe
What you put into life from life you do receive
Though some do see it in a different way
Those who believe that crime does pay
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The sun in the blue sky all day with warmth shone
But that was yesterday and yesterday has gone
And weather-wise this morning the sky overcast and gray
And the sun behind clouds it is hidden away
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No need to tell me i already know too well
That post bodily death i will not be where angels dwell
Since of a life devoted to God i do not have stories to tell
I am sure they will find some space for me in Hell
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Long before time it did become her foe
She danced in the Star Ballroom years ago
Of wavy shoulder length brown hair and always well dressed
She was the former Pride of Millstreet West
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With the saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder i for one can only agree
For what is a weed to one person may even be a flower to me
And beauty has many sides to it as you and i know all too well
What to me does seem as nice poetry in your eyes is mere doggerel
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