EVOLUTION
I was weaned on country music
Rock-n-roll and poverty
Irish style.
Son, the priest said,
Put that guitar away
And get that hair cut right
And don’t play
‘I Can Get No Satisfaction’
Tonight.
It’s a sin to call yourselves
The Red Devils, he said,
And in his shadows
I could see mother nodding her head.
So we became The Royal Dukes,
Zig-zagging across Munster
And played ‘Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown’
Instead.
This will not do, he roared,
Rattling his pulpit,
The youth of my parish,
Harbingers of the Devil’s music,
What is wrong with Frank Ifield?
Dead music, Father, I told him
And offered to debate it
But he wouldn’t listen.
So I emigrated.

FREE FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS.

 

DRIVING WHILE BLACK

 Don’t drive while you’re black
‘Cos you may get stopped on the way back
From wherever you have been
Doing bad things to country and queen

Never drive when you’re black
Looking for white people to attack
‘Cos that’s a crime too
Though it’s okay to drive when you’re blue

Driving while black
Means you could get shot in the back
For turning left or failing to stop
By some trigger-happy, non-black cop

 

Some other ‘crimes’ while being black;
Smoking while black
Learning while black
Walking while black
Shopping while black
Eating while black

In fact almost any damn thing while black

 

 

free on Amazon at present.

 

 

THE WALL
I stopped by our wall again today
Staring
Just staring
I saw an image of you
Fleeting
As you hurried by
It was like somebody
Had stood on my grave
You in all your finery
Mirrored on a blank wall
Blank
Just like your face.

 

http://amzn.eu/3nRDJoW   (free copy of my book on Amazon)

GET MY FREE BOOK – THE MISSING POSTMAN AND OTHER STORIES – FREE ON AMAZON

http://amzn.eu/3nRDJoW

GET MY BOOK  – GEORGE – FREE  ON AMAZON

 

 

PADDINGTON BEAR ON AIR

 

Paddington Bear
Appeared on the air
Looking a lot like Hugh Bonneville
He said oh dear
This place looks queer
I much prefer Maida Vale or Notting Hill

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Irish-Plays-Falling-Grace/dp/1511702834/ref=la_B0034OIGOQ_1_24?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529499740&sr=1-24&refinements=p_82%3AB0034OIGOQ

 

 

FALLING FROM GRACE; Shane McGowan and the Pogues were one of the most honest and original bands ever. It all began in the streets and pubs of London’s Kings Cross, where punks, anarchists, artists – both piss and real – and musicians lived together as a community. The Pogues were a bunch of misfits that blazed a trail to huge success without seemingly trying, and it all eventually blew up in their faces. This is the story of Shane MacGowan’s rise and fall…rise and fall…rise…. I’LL TELL ME MA;The Clancy Bros. and Tommy Makem were bigger in the USA in 1963 than the Beatles. Bob Dylan to this day claims that Liam Clancy is the best ballad singer he ever heard. Yet they may never have existed if it wasn’t for Diane Hamilton (Guggenheim). She was a wealthy American divorcee with money and influence, and she loved music. In the mid 1950’s she toured Ireland, searching for talent for her new record label, and discovered, among others, Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem. Liam Clancy found himself in the USA, aged 20, learning the music and acting business, courtesy of Diane – and in between trying to keep Diane out of his bed. Diane was so smitten that she attempted suicide one night, after Liam literally kicked her from of his bed in her house in Connecticut. That was when Liam lit out for Greenwich Village, and the Clancy Bros were born.

OLD ACQUAINTANCE

I see they have sent him down – again

A two stretch this time

I sold a typewriter for him once

And got six months for my trouble

(he got three, but swore it was my idea)

 

Then there was the time he

Asked me to burn his house down

‘Two hundred quid’ he said ‘easy money’

‘The insurance won’t twig it’

(when I declined, he did the job himself)

 

After that we lost contact for several years

He removed his wife and daughters to another town,

Where he was just as big a bastard – to them –

And to the world in general

 

Drinking, gambling, big-mouthing and beating,

Mostly his wife,

Till she put a slit near his throat

With a carving knife

 

Left to his own devices

He hung misery about him like a shroud;

He went to Knock for a week

And returned a changed man

Flowers from Interflora, presents for the girls,

Flannel for everyone else.

She relented of course.

 

They don’t speak much about him in the town now

A nudge and a wink

When his wife appears;

‘She must have known what was going on…

Doing that with his girls….

And she had him back!’

 

 

 

TWO IRISH PLAYS – READ ALL ABOUT THEM!

NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO POLES is about the dysfunctional Kennedy clan, who are having a re-union. There’s the father, Con, a successful building contractor in London who has had to relocate back in Ireland because of tax irregularities in the UK; his long- suffering wife, Marion; his estranged son, Michael, who turns up after five years in Australia with Cathy, his new aborigine wife. And not forgetting his racist nephew, Jimmy, who hasn’t mellowed any as he has got older. BRENDAN BEHAN’S WOMEN… the play is set in the bar of the Chelsea Hotel in New York in 1963 and Beatrice Behan has come over from her home in Dublin to have it out with Brendan ,concerning rumours he is having an affair with Valerie Danby-Smith and is about to divorce her