Down Winetavern street beside what should be wood Quay
The people’s will defied, the land reused the finds destroyed
What should have been Ireland’s golden mile, twice what York is
Is now the grim set of civic offices near to Cork Street
Between the mummified cat and rat and the needle exchange
Where you can sit down at lunchtime and get hassled for change
Been donkeys years since cornmarket saw a corn king
We had a softbearded Norse King minting coinage, based in Christchurch
The high church the low crypt
More brothels and creepers than a Teddy Boy’s dresser
Thrift around here means sharing syringes
The laneways are dirty, the high flats are dingy
The veins are collapsing and so is the economy
Love the bones a me smoke bones with me them bones need calcium
Daze and days halcyon, getting on it early
Cars, blurs, coming, can’t see em
Points I can’t concede them like the league’s best keeper
Only dingers I do these days I use me Luas card leaper
Only fools and horses there’s only rides and mingers
Only tools and corpses, there’s plenty lovely gingers
You can hit the cobblestone and hear a lovely Irish singer
You can hit the cobblestones after an Irish right hand swinger
I smoke joints the whole shift
Ten hits the whole bift
Green shit she rolls it.
Lads who’ve never worked calling themselves grafters
Crashing college afters, vomiting on a Grafton corner
Feet pounding shook the rafters
She had more back than rashers
The dole is your da
Bring your best gal out for a roll from Spar, if you like deli know a good centra
In the city’s centre the hell mouth’s entrance
Do you know what I mean periods every sentence
The sentences are light, the lovely gear is dark
Nick a tourist’s bag then rifle through it in the park.
Dirty, old and sports a ford but it’s not Salford
Love a month’s vacation but can’t afford it
I hit flint off to get a fire on,
I am the not the phantom I’m the tyrant
I rugby around your rhymes demonic pile on
Uppercut he Landsdowne, shite scribes I style on
My stylus is sweaty, held like a pilum ‘tween forefinger and thumb
Pilate’s signature on a Judas sheet, ghosts in the centre on Jervis Street
Here the prices never drop, she’s not a bird mate she’s me moth
Like teens in Wezz clumsy hands are dropped
Half the shops are Starbucks, the shutters on the secondhand bookshop closed like a knight’s visor
This place is unrecognisable after its encounter with the tiger
No druids in Ireland anymore, just six cold cans of rank cider
Every pig in suit is a financial advisor
Every chav shop in pull&bear a spicer
Every lad getting stewed, stoned as Loughcrew
It’s highway Ireland, lads, knock it right through.
Knock on the door, a knock on the head of a proper headthebaw
A knock in the bed, Knock airport’s construction commenced
Without one sheet of planning permission, an area he fenced off
Cleansed with blessings turned into a runway, man on a mission
That James Horan out of Mayo, let me hear you say way-oh, way-oh
You lot are hauling bricks to Babel, madding crowd to rabble
I’m making stone chips, my swung mallet like a judge’s gavel.
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