Song Of A Remorseful Man Poem by Francis Duggan

Hard enough prison confinement without the bitter memory
Of my long dead murdered father like a spectre haunting me
Every night I dream about him here in my gloomy prison cell
I'd be best off dead and buried and suffering with the damned in hell.

Hard enough to live an outcast a reject with a tainted name
Without the added tag of jail bird burdened with the brand of Cain
I've brought disgrace on my kindred and brought upon myself ill fame
Then surely I deserve to suffer but oh the agony of shame.

I recall that fateful evening that my father came home drunk
Beat and spat upon my mother kicked at me and called me funk
I struck at him he fell backwards and knocked his head against the wall
And he lay dazed there for a moment slightly shaken from his fall.

I could see that he was furious as he rose back on his feet
And from his mouth the blood came spurting I had broken two of his teeth
He leapt at me like a tiger and seized hold of me by the throat
He squeezed tightly I was choking and I pulled a pen knife from my coat.

I stabbed at him with my pen knife and he slumped down to the floor
And he lay moaning like a dying man he'd not hit me anymore
He was bleeding like a stuck pig from his neck the blood did run
And I felt guilty scared and frightened and ashamed of what I'd done.

My distraught and tearful mother in a state of semi shock
Ran down to the nearest phone booth for to telephone the Doc
And the doctor he came quickly followed by the ambulance
And they took dad off on a stretcher then I knew he'd not a chance.

Three police men came in to arrest me I did not try to resist
They put my hands behind my back and put handcuffs on my wrists
And the neighbours all assembled for last glimpse of jail bound man
As they marched me down the pathway towards the police motor van.

Next morning the turnkey told me that my father he had died
And I was to be tried for murder for murder I would be tried
The trial jury found me guilty and the judge he sentenced me
To twenty one years confinement in this penitentiary.

My mother died seven years back she died of a broken heart
On that evening of blood and murder her whole World fell apart
Since that evening of mad violence she was never quite the same
And the memory of that fatal stabbing till death with her did remain.

And I her only son a killer in a jail house serving time
Paying the penalty for murder for the vilest type of crime
I've already spent ten years here ten long hard years of my life
For the killing of my father with a sharp edged pocket knife.

Every hour seems like a fortnight every minute seems a day
Every day seems like a lifetime time so slowly ticks away
Eleven more long years of prison life seems like an eternity
He's a happy man though he be a poor man who walks guiltless proud and free.