[MURAL I]


ALEC HIGGINS & GEORDIE BEST

Geordie you’re a boy, make a big noise
Play it in to feet, gonna be a big man someday
Lodger for a lady, Matt Busby’s new baby
Soon to be the fifth Beatle or some might say

In your nightclubs and boutiques you were talk of the town
Then a tribute on an airport when your plane went down

And maybe if I’d never left
There would still be Alec Higgins and blushing Best
Chuckling in the park as they confessed
Yes, maybe if I’d never left
You could walk past Hurricane Higgins and Geordie Best
Walking sticks leant against forgetfulness
The two old boys as the best of friends got away with all the bad stuff in the end
As if it all worked out OK, and I’d never left

Alec you’re a fiend, keep your tip clean
Tearing through the reds at the Jam Pot on Sandy Row
You went over like George after falling off your horse
How you potted from the corners God only knows

A can of Guinness for his tea is all Alec would ever need
You’re so bitter, you could never bounce back from the ban

And maybe if I’d never left
There would still be Alec Higgins and blushing Best
Chuckling in the park as they confessed
Yes, maybe if I’d never left
You could walk past Hurricane Higgins and Geordie Best
Walking sticks leant against forgetfulness
The two old boys as the best of friends got away with all the bad stuff in the end
As if it all worked out OK, and I’d never left

Geordie you’re a boy, make a big noise
Fallin’ in the street, like your Mum, to your Da’s dismay
Alec you’re a fiend, keep your tip clean
Hustling and sticking in your throat ‘til your dying day
The two old boys as the best of friends got away with all the bad stuff in the end


FIND TOMORROW

“How can it possibly stop”, she said
When the news report came through
“It’s not nearly enough”, he said
In the compensation queue

A final tear the day you die
A tear held back throughout the trial
It’s time you took your time and lived your lives

Pull off your Celtic shirt
And unzip my dancin’ skirt
Your father doesn’t have to know
It’s up to us to let it go
It’s up to us to keep it close
It’s up to us to let it go and find tomorrow

Take your shoebox down from the bookcase
And turn it out across the bed
Take your mirror down, out of your face
And push the tension from your head

The casket’s closed to cold benign
The rage has rotted with their eyes
It’s time you took your time and lived your lives

Pull off your Rangers shirt
And unzip my dancin’ skirt
Your mother doesn’t have to know
It’s up to us to let it go
It’s up to us to keep it close
It’s up to us to let it go and find tomorrow

There is no impending pennance
And no agonising wait
There is no shining iceberg
To sink your ugly freight

For all your dying husbands inside
And all your mourning and ruined wives
You need to take your time
It’s time you took your time
You need to take your time and live your lives


OLD COLLINS IS A LONG TIME DEAD

Old Collins is a long time dead
Old Collins is a long time dead
Partition’s still and issue
We’ve yet to really miss you
They haven’t gone away he said
Old Collins is a long time dead

From Empire to a Commonwealth, a new era set the scene
A general election splits the orange from the green
Anticipate conscription and thank God for armistice
He organised the volunteers to more active service
The swift low-flying columns who hid in tenements
Dreamed up in university - a different internment
The devil De Valera would court the Catholic vote
And swan around America while Collins took the boat


[MURAL II]


PAISLEY

There’s no substitute for status in this old dirty business
And there’s nothing like politics for patronising heretics

I’ve often imagined your funeral, where no-one f*cking came
A quiet little statement, not out of respect, but out of shame
We wait for them all to go soft and die, and lay them in the earth
Then the new state is born and immediately breaks the gangs to prove its worth

I’ve often imagined your sermons on mid-July Sundays
For all the bits you’re leaving out what’s even left to say
It’s all a bit Old Testament - the angry God says no
And promises rivers of Loyalist blood to Thatcher and the Pope

Woe unto thee, Reverend Paisley
You smiled so hard with those Ballymena teeth
For dear old Ian so loved the Lord,
Ulster fists will be banging for evermore

It’s the same for the Orange Order and the Grand Masonic Lodge
and the Church: clamber up the pyramid til you’re next to God
We wait for all that to go soft and die and lay it in the earth
Then the new state sits behind its desk and thanks Ian for all his work

Woe unto thee, Reverend Paisley
You smiled so hard with those Ballymena teeth
For dear old Ian so loved the Lord,
Ulster fists will be banging for evermore


BLOODY SQUADDIE

Throw a rock, throw a rock, fire a plastic bullet
Pale from shock, pale from shock, screaming for to cool it
Bogside, waterside, side-swipe riot
Peaceful march, civil rights, squaddie doesn’t but it

The delicate situation now demands
Parades and marches all be banned
Trickle down the chain of command
More than 13’s blood on your hands
They’ll smear blood on your English streets
And they’ll smear blood where your family sleeps
The delicate situation now demands
Parades and marches all be banned

Risin up against the state
Supplement the tired police
But handed to them on a plate
The only excuse they’d ever need
Shoring up to keep the state
The boys came in to keep the peace
To see a white hanky - but shoot anyway

Decades pass, and then an election
A minister for education
Could the boy knocked by the system
Re-invent and try to govern
Can we tolerate to trust him?
Or have we thrown our own white towel in?
The latest strategic action now demands
Tricky exams all be banned

Risin up against the state
Supplement the tired police
But handed to them on a plate
The only excuse they’d ever need
Shoring up to keep the state
The boys came in to keep the peace
To see a white hanky - but shoot anyway

Throw a rock, throw a rock, fire a plastic bullet
Pale from shock, pale from shock, screaming for to cool it
Bogside, waterside, side-swipe riot
Peaceful march, civil rights, squaddie doesn’t but it

Risin up…


OLD COLLINS II

Old Collins is a long time dead
Old Collins is a long time dead
Partition’s still and issue
We’ve yet to really miss you
They haven’t gone away he said
Old Collins is a long time dead

Burning down the customs house, he’s making his demand
For the keys of Dublin Castle to be placed into his hand
Ten thousand pounds dead or alive, his blood to buy and sell
The King’s writ doesn’t run here, nor in the Woodenbridge Hotel
We got plenty of sovereignty but still no republic
The freedom to achieve freedom - banal old rhetoric
What a mess the Easter Rising, what a farce at Bail-na-Bla
What damage done by grand ideas, we’ll never know the half

Old Collins is a long time dead
Old Collins is a long time dead
Partition’s still and issue
We’ve yet to really miss you
They haven’t gone away he said
Old Collins is a long time dead


GREATER THINGS

Born in Wolverhampton, raised in South Armagh
Learned the No Surrender from the Tiocfaidh ar la
A common-law orphan, played Gaelic football
‘Til they stopped the bus in Kingsmill and just shot them all

Fair retaliation in a no-rules war
Lead to mushrooming recruitment of the young and sore
After family tragedy and carrying guns
Came up reborn, from being down in prison

Hoped to walk with God, but got waylaid
Stood against the ceasefire, felt a point should be made
In support of the marchers, kept the Orange faith
Smack and ecstasy funds a sectarian disgrace

Great books have been written about greater things

Maverick killings to support Drumcree
Michael McGoldrick, Happy Birthday Billy
Claimed undeserving of the name King Rat
Did the great inventer of the Loyalist spat

Expelled by the big boys for refusing the boat
He threatened a woman with cutting her throat
One half of an H-block, biding their time
With the INLA on the other side

They ruled no collusion, but security failed
For a thug to be silenced, a cross to be nailed
Then a dance in Dungannon got the Kingsmill routine
Another measured response in this troubled quarantine

Great books have been written about greater things

Two masked gunmen in orange shirts
Put a Shankill Road ceasefire on yellow alert
Disappear up Conway Street and back to base
Dispatched the leadership’s bullet through a red-hand face

A mural-sized message about flouting authority
The police should be given every assistance by the community
We were all told that your guns had gone
We never really believe, we hoped you’d prove us wrong

Great books have been written about greater things
It’s sad to die, it should be sad
But it all depends on the life you’ve had
Great books have been written about greater things


YOUR GARDEN

Your garden is tended by the residents
Your garden is barbaric and it’s neatly swept
Your garden is dignified* in granite *disfigured?
Your garden is full of tour guides so it’s never quiet

Does it calm you down?
Does it move things on?
Does it celebrate these things or commiserate?

Don’t spoil it
Don’t spoil it
To distill out bad blood you’ve got to boil it

In your garden there is a lamplight that’s always on
Your garden is for volunteers, prisoners, civilians
Your garden shows respect for those who served
Your garden is exactly what you deserve

Does it blur the lines?
Does is sanctify?
Does it pacify you lot? Or inspire you?

Don’t spoil it
Don’t spoil it
To distill out bad blood you’ve got to boil it

Does it calm you down?
Does it move things on?
Does it celebrate these things or commiserate?

Don’t spoil it
Don’t spoil it
To distill out bad blood you’ve got to boil it

They’re whiting out the murals to stop us looking back
A parliamentary cure-all and a blue plaque
They’re whiting out the murals to stop us looking back
A parliamentary cure-all and a blue plaque


SECRET STORY

Stop telling my secret story

We all know it properly, we all tell it differently

So when you make your little movie, don’t be too careful

Don’t tell my version – Tell your version, or disrupt everything

Stop telling my secret story

Of bodily debris, and signs you cannot see

Photographs of weapons retired to certain shady bunker locations unknown by normals

Archive footage of civilian character actors, urgent and morose, and poses in murals

Flashbacks of night-time incendiaries, balaclavas and sunglasses at funerals

Meetings that don’t make sense, that wouldn’t happen outside the story

Chance transcendiaries of TV news and familial allegiances,

On sporting pitches and regional showcasions

Community solidarity and libraries of fraternal ties, values to unite and antagonise
A shared propaganda, fumbling in translation

From side to side, a shunting commissive, a bumpy ride

Derision and condemnation in a secretive narrative

But a flaccid third act, this ripening story, failing to inspire even speculation

After the tabulation of statistics and the invoice has been returned

Only estimation of how the car-bomb decibel used to ring

What kind of a thing? And is it too late to tell?

Stop telling my secret story

Of bodily debris, and signs you cannot see

A title doesn’t make a story you know

Compensation tossed after frustration

And monuments in gardens of earnest forgetting

No paranoia of lessons unlearned

No leap to objectivity – for that would bring

Shuddering whiplash, a mocking and crumpled rebound caused by sticky shoe-soles

The monuments are outside, and outside

Not our side and their side

On some new layer, hovering over optimism

For distant eyes, not inside lives

A pointing up of the storyline, that makes

Remembering feel like amnesia

And flashbacks quake to anaesthesia
I
I won’t have my story used up for that

The characters are all the same – but my movie is better cast

Some folks wouldn’t even begin to tell you because of that

They wouldn’t even tell their own children

I reserve the right to reprimand, as you observe but fail to understand

My secret story

Stop telling my secret story

We all know it properly, we all tell it differently

So when you make your little movie, don’t be too careful

Don’t tell my version – Tell your version, or disrupt everything


I will pause your movie,

And think in different directions,

And miss my connection


OLD COLLINS III

Old Collins is a long time dead

Old Collins is a long time dead

Partition’s still and issue

We’ve yet to really miss you

They haven’t gone away he said

Old Collins is a long time dead

The IRA it can’t hold out, the Brits won’t give an inch

We cannot stomach compromise, not then nor ever since

Wild men screaming through the keyhole, safe in cowardice

They pray with their high standards although they’re meaningless

Let the radicals all kill themselves so the bores can run and run

The Boundary Commission fails to banish partition
They expected this N.I. to fail as an economic state

In 90 years, look at yourselves, do tigers hibernate?


[MURALS IV]


HERE WE ARE AGAIN

Here we are again, here we are again

A cluster of deserters facing west with their eyes low
Here we are with breast-pocket ball-point pens queuing to go
Queuing to go

Collar and sleeves
And something to read
Here we are again

A window of acquaintance in reverse measured nicely
Here we are, but soon are gone politely: see you in a week
See you in week

For it’s blowin’ a gale
Through your January sales
Here we are again

Again we are connected and displaced
A photograph of a familiar face
You compare and check your progress with the list and miss
And kiss the tourist
The distance now endureth
To anywhere we are again

Here we are again
Imagine ‘round the status of the plans and lament the chances
Your next event is just around the bend so bend back the branches
Bend the branches back
Bend ‘em back

You haven’t a clue
What you’re going to do
Here we are again

Again we are connected and displaced
A photograph of a familiar face
You compare and check your progress with the list and miss
And kiss the tourist
The distance now endureth
To anywhere we are again, forthwith

There you are brave face, and here we are
There you are brave face, and here we are
There you are brave face, and here we are
There you are brave face, and here we are


VAN THE MAN

Well I went to see my idol, I thought, what if he dies on stage?
It’d be just like an undertaker dying while digging his own grave
But he didn’t, he was brilliant, and the way he played
Made me think if I’m gonna do this, I’d better up my game to stand a chance

And what else - apart from “it was good” - would I hope to write?
No matter what I was always gonna have a great night
What kind of epiphany did I half-predict?
Some kind of literary-holy-spirit-pink-fit or Ulster trance?

I played this to my idol, and asking if it was good
I watched his lips explaining to check he understood
But he didn’t, he was too polite, he liked the song a lot
And win or lose I’m gonna have to give this all I’ve got or there’s no chance

I’m well-healed, and I’m on my way back home
I’m well-heeled, and I’m after that horizon

I’m well-healed, and I’m on my way back home
I’m well-heeled, and I’m after that horizon


LOSING MY ACCENT

I remember once losing my wallet

Way back at the end of my teens

In truth it was picked from my pocket

By some hallion in search of the Queen

I expect they drank most of the money

So that probably wound up the same

But the cards must’ve been pretty useless

Because all of them brandished my name

My granny picked one in brown leather

For the wearing it had to be thick

But I lost it with all of my money

That day when my pocket was picked

I remember inside was a photo of me

And another of somebody else

There might’ve been one with the both of us

Safely hidden with my worldly wealth

15 years later I’m losing my accent

Time has hollowed the weight of my sighs

You might still decipher the spring in my step

But you’ll flag the bags under my eyes

And if when I’m talking you get distracted by a certain mutation of tone

Don’t remark that I’m losing my accent

Just raise me a glass and welcome me home

I’m gradually losing the sponsor

From the front of my Liverpool top

The white of it flakes off so easily

There’s no way that I can make it stop

Here where it used to say Carlsberg

Only these abstract shapes can be seen

Despite the washing machine’s tireless efforts

You can still make out my favourite team

The sponsor was out of date anyway

And the red it is tending to pink

It’s tricky to mask your true colours

They stick to you more than you think

But you might have noticed that I’m losing my accent

You may notice the weight of my sighs

You might have detected a spring in my step

But flagged the bags under my eyes

But if when I’m talking you get distracted by a certain mutation of tone please
Don’t remark that I’m losing my accent

Just raise me a glass and welcome me home

Sammy Crooks stands at the roadside

He’s lost all the feel of his toes

At the back of his mind he did wonder

If they’d end up as black as his robes

Old Sam’s shuffled off of his step now

But another has taken his place

You might not get the shake and the lecture

But you’ll still see a red rosy face

So put a crisp note in his barrel

Just in lieu of the myrrh and the gold

He might not talk like Big Sammy

But sure he’s there in the steps in the cold

Well if when I’m talking you get distracted by a certain mutation of tone

Don’t remark that I’m losing my accent

Just walk me through the Flagship

Through the side door of Fealty’s

Because I don’t feel that different…


[MURAL V}