Palace Bar

the walking words to Toners

 The pull of stout dark and roasted, the barmen’s white shirts, a gift of gab.

Yellowed pits sweat stretched and the collar too, going grey. Irish workers after work supping which leads to singing there, the ride home too. Others slumping,sleeping against walls in pissy toilets or those easy corners. They changed street names from ours to theirs. They tried to kill our spirit, our stories, they wanted us to be them but wouldn’t treat us human. In king Georges nightmares leprechauns kick him in the family jewels and spit on his lips, stamped on his shoes, they kill his children with explosives shoved up their holes: arms lose hands, legs lose feet, toes, faces, bones, blood stick to decorated walls. I wasn’t there as the Dubliners played, nor the Pogues, though we bought fish from a monger opposite on our walk to Dartmouth Square. Toners closed doors held a promise of literary ghouls holding empty pints. I held a special almond topped Mars bar and drove the batmobile into walls.

At that stage being proud of where you were from wasn’t, Scotland still sold more whiskey and we didn’t have Colin Farrell kissing Britney Spears at the VMAs. We weren’t voted sexiest voice, we had our Bond: Pierce, he like me had had his accent ruined and robbed by living there. The country that had gutted ours had let us in, the battered wives, the exiled single mothers, the damp poor.

Her I was home, hungry for the drink in georgian rooms packed of pint sippers, mind slippers, searching for what : a song from Brendan, a tin whistle, Belacqua, Seaghán grinning from the gutter, snugs, myself boy old standing across from here with his country and family at distance in a pub window.