We Are Only Mortal Poem by Francis Duggan

I never use words like lady or say sir to anyone
Unless of course that person will point at me their gun,
Death at me coldly staring, the trigger cocked to fire,
To live till Nature takes me I harbour that desire.

You can have your Yankee President and you can have your British Queen
I pay no respect to them as too much of them I've seen
They go to bed to copulate, they sleep and eat and die
And they too are only mortal the same as you and I.

Some see me as a cynic and others see me as a clown
And so few ever greet me when I walk in the town
In the street I live in hardly known few call me by my name
And praise and criticism I treat them as the same.

I'm well beyond the fifty and what hair I've left is gray
And I am one of those blokes who has known a better day
The prime years passed so quickly how quick the time did fly
And it seems like only yesterday when I was a schoolboy.

The river flows forever through flatlands towards the sea
And centuries from now the birds wil sing on hedge and bush and tree
And there will be one to take my place when I am dead and gone
For we are only mortal and without us life goes on.