Francis Duggan Poems

I do seem quite blind to the things that they see
And though they are my friends they seem strangers to me
The things they believe in I struggle to comprehend
Sometimes I do feel that I don't have a friend.
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Amanda Vanstone's promised New Year present to the Bakhtiyari family is deportation
She claims the family are from Pakistan
But Mr Bakhtiyari swears he and his wife and children are Afghans
And he does seem an honest enough man.
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Young Millstreet people home for Christmas from big cities far away
In the pubs in the old Hometown enjoying the Christmas holiday
Meeting old friends, making merry enjoying their guinness and their beer
These are good times in Duhallow coming up to the New Year.
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He is the big man of Wonthaggi one who has travelled far and wide
And he knows of life in the Outback out there in the brown Countryside
He has travelled all over Australia from Darwin down to Ballarat
Across the south western deserts he has been there and he has done that.
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On her front verandah she sits on her chair
The freshening morning winds blow and toss her gray hair
The wisdom of the years in her gentle brown eyes
Old marge in her late seventies of great insight and wise.
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The pitter patter of the tiny feet
Of children running up and down the street
I love to hear them laughing at their play
My child within from me has gone away.
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A bloke in the pub came up to me he shouted hi there you never do well
Are you that Francis Duggan the man of doggerel
He smiled a silly toothy smile the gap showed in his teeth
Some people when they are drunk they are not nice to meet.
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I may seem pessimistic though I am not without hope
But in this World of many pitfalls I do struggle for to cope
Some see me as a bit dippy not quite right in the head
Though worse things I remember about me have been said.
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The lorikeets are chirping in the bright sun shine
And the yellow tail black cockatoos shred pine cones on the tall monterey pine
To get at the small dark pine cone seeds to them a delicious treat
What is noursishing and good to them most humans dare not eat.
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Up through the knee high scrub the wild grey roos bound
They even go faster than a fast greyhound
Like a big pogo stick they go hopping along
Adult males taller than a tall man and twice as strong.
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