Ragin and Una at the last installment of Come Rhyme With Me. Photo by Brenda Fitzsimmons.
Come Rhyme With Me in New York
Una performed MONTO and GOWL (after a brief explanation of what the word ‘gowl’ means in Ireland) at the Women’s / Trans’ Poetry Jam and open mic at the awesome Bluestockings on Allen Street recently. If you were there, thanks for listening! And check out their upcoming events on their website linked above.
COME RHYME WITH ME
MARCH 6th
@ OUTHOUSE (105 CAPEL ST D7)
w/ Una Mullally/Ragin Spice/Philly McMahon/Oisin McKenna
A new season has sprung with fresh beginnings
Best buds blooming ready for a new innings
Outhouse calls for word rhyming and page licking
Come on down, it’s Spring, Chicken.
This is not a play.
RS
I’m terry prone to swearing on the telly
Boxing clever about whatever insert pout of the farce we’re dribbling living in sin and paying penance for other peoples whims.
Chancing their arms now chewing on legs, the fat of the land is a romantic notion that the man once had. They danced on our dreams; we’re all tredding softly, now we’ve bust at the seams.
They replaced trees with their species, and built ash groves willow park oak broke downs. Up in the air and in far beyond fields.
Extinct buildings and ghost estate of this place.
O Reilly don’t get me started blimey our city is waiting on a trolley in a grimey corridor breathing its last breath, lets CPR the shit out of it. It’s in our hands to reignite our future. Do not let this history pass us by.
What will they say…? We cried tears over someone else’s spilled milk but didn’t bother our arses to mop it up.
We just sat there and soaked up what we were being tolled. Trolled by haunted souls that listen to liveline. Stations booming out tunes from lunatics who get tattoos of their beaten girlfriends on their necks
Cheek of them telling us this is what we need. Greed got us here now debt is our biggest fear. What will you leave behind a
Can we not see that we are not beneath them. We need a drive by shooting and pollute this city with our inspirations. Let the looting begin
United we stand divided we’re just a bottom line
Stop yield look left right of our way we need a plan of action a p o a. before all hope withers and passes and tomorrow was our last day to procrastinate. Debate is central banking on the wankers that are bleeding our resources dry.
Signing on for spare change, change is ours if we want it. If we don’t stand up we can’t be counted. We flounced flaunted our wares without any care for what was round the corner. It’s time to turn it around and face our fears front on come on
Universal social networking charging at them lets cause a pussy riot and stop all this flight from our land. I can’t stand it another goodbye. I’m staying put lets all do the same to get the fuck out of this rut.
MONTO
UM
“It is men, only men, from the first to the last that we have to do with. To please a man I did wrong at first, then I was flung about from man to man. Men police lay hands on us. By men we are examined, handled, doctored. In the hospital it is a man again who makes prayer and reads the bible for us. We are had up before magistrates who are men, and we never get out of the hands of men until we die.” - an extract from an interview with a prostitute by Josephine Butler as part of her campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts.
Yeah yeah, that’s what she said.
Lady Wilde digested the newsletter, and folded it, placing a cup of tea on the stand, looking out the window.
Number 1 Merrion Square,
a shadow where her son’s statue would sit, lounging on a rock all Tulisa and dead stare.
A man of some importance. He got a statue. His father got a plaque.
His mother… well, she was just a groundbreaker. Why cut her any slack?
Her salon emptied out, Bram Stoker was thinking vampires would never catch on.
Isaac Butt was yet to write any Good Bits.
Speranza chilling, listening to Rihanna, thinking about her pronunciations of ‘Jameson’ and ‘paper’.
Markievitz: Dear land thou art not conquered yet.
Sitting in the Abbey with Maud Gonne, placing a cup of tea on the stand, looking out the window.
Shadows where the drug dealers would be.
All benzos and gear, valium and crack stored in Dublin City Council plant pots along the Liffey.
Markievitz now, just second in command (naturally) in Stephen’s Green, 1916, just opposite where TopShop will be.
She holds out in the Royal College of Surgeons for six days
until Pearse’s P45 comes her way.
Kilmainham Gaol where she’s number 70 of women in prison.
The rest put there for stealing bread, or taking British troups up to Monto Monto Monto, running from police on Foley Street turning the corner towards SuperValu, only distracted by ballet dancers rehearsing where The Lab will be.
“I do wish your lot would have the decency to shoot me” –
Markievitz’s words in Kilmainham jaded by the mercy afforded to her sex.
Markievitz’s words in Kilmainham jaded by the mercy afforded to her sex.
1971, still in Monto, this time, the platform of Connolly Station.
Boarding the contraceptive train to choo choo choose their bodies.
Boarding the contraceptive train to choo choo choose their bodies.
You can do stations of the cross on O’Connell Street like Mad Mary who lived up the road from me
and knocked me off my bike aged seven for whistling saying it was the music of the devil.
and knocked me off my bike aged seven for whistling saying it was the music of the devil.
Dancing at the crossroads of Larkin and the Kylemore Café, near where Ann Summers will be.
Robinson was just a career woman, which presidents tend to be.
Ambitious. Driven. Went to Trinity. Always looking to the next gig.
Female attributes that don’t sit well with callers to Joe Duffy.
She was turned into a rug on Dame St opposite where Crackbird would be -
now this is the 90s so this is pre-waxing.
Rugs were allowed then, removal wasn’t so taxing.
Give us the smooth lubricated body of Page 3.
The rapey pummeling of pornography.
Like when Levy said Britney’s body became so familiar she started to almost think they used to go out.
A slave for you. For me?
Now, on Capel Street, a stone’s throw from Youth Defense, if you’re into throwing stones.
A rock’s throw to the Rotunda up the road from Monto, where by men she is examined, handled, and doctored as she turns the ferry ticket over in her pocket.
The Rare Auld Rhymes
RS
Arís is
Arís eile
Haon
Do
Tree
These are
My rare old rhymes
Bits about me in
The times just gone by
Bygones
Be
Bye Going
Going
Going
Going
Gones
What went down
In my own history.
Still bewildering
And mystifying me
Lots malingering
I don’t want to be here when I’m forty
Doing this
Dissing myself
Misses
Thrust
Opportunities
Happenings
Spring awakenings
Shaking
Like thieves sold my soul
I’m the one who
Gave it away
For forty pieces of love
I ponder on the people above
The ones that went before me
They’re all part of my story
The past and the dead
Quivering
And quaking in my boots
Faking fighting
Biting at a bit
Chomping
And choking on the past
Dry heaving and weaving myself round
Streets that I’ve stood
Memories
Please fade away
I got to concentrate on
This
The present day
And the tomorrows
The dawning’s
Drawing
Maps for the future
Forgetting
Regrets
Things I’ve done
I
Have
Done
At one with
That
Hats off to
Those that marched along with me
Respects for the ones that have gone
But I’m done
Leaning on pastures of past
The future is clear
And for my taking
Self
Less
Ness
Bred from
A selfish act
This
My pact
To me
To let go of a past
Is to
Set thine own self
Free
Believe
Drop an E
Be live
Be life
Thrive in the
A destiny you create
The future is bright
The future is magenta
And I’m hell bent
On making
It mine
Mechanics of Coping
RS
I’d take up joggin
Except I run like Phoebe from friends
It’d be a good means to an end of
Struggling
Drudging through the befuddlement
That is daily torment
Of hang nails
Bad dreams
Relentless reality
Sanity found in
Bedroom sanctuaries
Clean sheets
DVDS
Please let these feelings
Be made of pvc
Or teflon
So it doesn’t stick to me
When sad thoughts linger
Pointing the finger to everything else
Pin point yourself
Coldplay fix u
Don’t listen to the smiths
Morrissey’s morbidity is catching
Hatch plans
Catch up with pals
Play
Emotional eating dulls the pain
A second on the lips
A lifetime on the hips
The same is said for these sad thoughts
Think it once
It’ll be thought of a million times
Over
And
Over
Hot chips record
Retreats
Unwinds
Beats the blues
Tuesday bloody Tuesdays
After days, weekends and years of revelling
To hell with it
Done
At one
At peace
At ease
Breathing helps
Inhale
Exhale
Air guitar to Van Halen
Paling in comparison
Listening to
Van the man
Astral freaks
My dreams get mad
Inexplicably bad
Moods are low
Must remember to get up and
Go forth
Get out from this pillow fort
Built of fear
Dear hold me
Help me out the hole
And find the old me
Balance the books
Get out of the red
Do not dred
What is present
Presence
And being
The here
The now
The I will get over this somehow
Determination
Battle stations
Me versus mine
Mind over matter
Shattered
Rest
Be your best
We are blessed
And beloved
Believe you are alive
Thrive
Throw a party
Be part of a beautiful society
Pay no attention to people with piety
Don’t be your own worst frenemy
Big yourself up
Come up trumps
Tiny tasks
Those are achievable
Thoughts are deceiving
If you give up believing
Hope in yourself
Stealth and stability
Are the goals
The steps of the ladder
That may bring you closer
To your self
And a better state of mental health
Come Rhyme With Me sister Temper-Mental MissElayneous on TG4’s Ceol Ar An Imeall.
GOWL
UM
I saw the “best” minds of my generation bitching about each other in smoking sections over three euro pints.
Waiting for sound of silver to talk to them.
When Dublin, I love you, but you’re bringing me down.
Dragging themselves through the Workman’s looking for alcoholic ginger beer fix.
Angel Delight generation proto-hipsters complaining about their broadband connection
pulled on a red chord became a red carpet tattered, rolled up high in Dublin 8 flats floating on roof gardens listening to Washed Out.
Passing through free universities with radiant iPad screens
taking photos of iron clad ideas of the things they have to have
Expelled from parental homes.
Expelled from Instragram for obscene odes to the Samuel Beckett Bridge.
Who bared all in Playboy with cruise ship entertainment values and valet politeness and tour guide humour.
And the resentment of a waiter with an MA yet to have his life illuminated.
And now living in a place where instant coffee has a stigma
Where anti-theft clothes hangers are fired across hotel rooms waking from TV3 psychic nightmares, the mind leaping towards Sherry Fitzgerald and the motionless world of Phoenix magazine.
Where no one chained themselves to gates.
Whole intellects postured to run for election and vanished into Kildare Village with ambiguous digital picture frames of Mauritius.
You can jump in a Hen night limousine, reappear with a West Coast Cooler with big pacifist eyes sexy in their orange skin.
Break down in a Temple Bar gymnasium naked, trembling because Grindr won’t load. more. guys., howling on your knees on Harcourt Street, being dragged out of Club 92 waving genitals and free shot tokens.
Copulating on ecstasy and falling off the bed to the bass of SBTRKT, continuing to roll on the floor and fainting, flashing buttocks out the top widow of the 16A, walking all night into the forest with shoes full of Buckfast waiting for the door of the Salty Dog to open full of strong steam and optimism
Creating great gangland dramas for RTE on apartment balconies at the arse end of the Liffey
under the blue light of Supermacs toilets, eating lamb stew and digesting breakfasts in the basement of what was Bewleys.
Trying desperately to identify with a tragedy
Driving cross country to a festival, journeying to the church, dying in the church, came back to the church looking for a vein, watched over by the church, hated by the church, went away and now the church is lonesome.
What’s the influence when nothing has come before
Where’s the impetus when you’re knocking on a closed door
what’s the inspiration when artists are just funding whores
And when the shit stuff gets through why would you do something different to what’s just been done before.
You’re talking about an audience that stays in the stadiums to sing when we’re losing
and for every hard fought popbaby
There’s those who expect the hand outs of their choosing
Locals only Dogtown graffiti
Surf boards to arts board
Fund wave – a new genre
I saw the best minds of that generation
Sit in the Italian quarter drinking cheap bottles
Wallace mottled the books even when he was making jobs
Two wrongs one right, first fight, third flight, out to a tax haven when trillions lie sun bathing, it’s the forty foot with 40 shades
make that fifty to whip you into shape.
Fathers who call their wives ‘Mummy’.
Who felt the dull sting of being made walk through business class just to get to coach.
A first class economy, an upgraded anomaly.
The Quinntisential guaranteed cover up,
Their rhymes regulated by someone who doesn’t give a fuck.
They’re still shelling Homs,
you’re shelling pistachios.
The Great Irish Take Off
Rising dough
Unleavened beds
Flour power
Cmere sugar
Got any yolks?
Where’s the essence?
Spooning
Sieving through.
So far so good soda esso esso esso
Espo signs pointing back to Texaco
Who now say, cocaine, how uncouth!
Didn’t you know spending isn’t meant to be conspicuous any more?
Pass the whore
Your granny had a range and her daughter had a Range Rover
She’d be aghast at that Aga, making jokes about how there are two US States in Cavan; Virginia and Maine.
Those one eyed shrews burrowing through the heterosexual dollar
Those one eyed newspapers hurrying through another merger
Those one eyed shrews that do nothing but sit on their ass and snipe at the urbanite realism of James Murphy.
Shut Up And Crave Your Bit.
Making sphinxes from cement and aluminum.
Salach! Filth, ugliness.
Salach! A feral state
When you found love in a hopeless place
But Mary Fitzgerald wants to lock the gates.
Salach! Occupying occupations would be a greater help than occupying sweaty corners of streets to disparaging looks from people who think they know better but are in fact commuting dickheads.
Salach! Their eyes a thousand blind windows. Suffocating views, claustrophobic fears, every day just a set up for a montage on Reeling in The Years
Salach! How much more can you take
When you realise the 99 percent are a bunch of flakes?
I saw the best minds of this generation
Experience cramming so a life is a meme.
Know what I mean?
I can haz dream?
To do that, they would cross oceans Frankly
A tornado blew threw your house the other day
Did you miss it buying 3 for two euro fruit and veg in Super Valu
They said in a crisis creativity would rise through the cracks. Because you don’t give people things to make them creative, you take things away from them.
Thanks for that. Thanks for the favour.
Trade marks, take a punt. Give a pounding.
Laugh at invisible humour like Otto’s shoes talking to him at Smashing Pumpkins and the kid doesn’t know if he’s being sarcastic anymore.
Have you tried turning yourself off and on again?
To an idea that cut wrists three times successfully unsuccessfully until suddenly it is flowing into their minds like water from a tap.
And there is a teenager listening to Pinball Wizard for the first time.
Retweets are not endorphins
The arrogance of newness the arrogance of novelty. The arrogance that new toys and new thoughts should confine existing ones to history.
Arrogance and compliments are two sides of a bad coin. A 20p horse taking a dump aggregated by Boing Boing.
Did I say aggregated I meant curated.
Cured and ated and digested in a Flickr of an eye.
Why know something when you can just know about it?
Cliff notes to wisdom as spliffs to real meditation.
Medication for ADHD and insatiable cranial appetite suppression.
PMS PMMA TSB TDs and a torso on Dame Street.
I am with you in Rockland
I am with you in Rockford
I am with you in Sion Hill
I am with you in Blackrock College
I am with you in Alexander
I am with you in High School Rathgar
I am with you in Colaiste Iosagain
I am with you in St Michaels
I am with you in Gonzaga
I am with you in Muckross
I am with you in Andrews
I am with you in Loretto Dalkey
I am with you in Loretto Foxrock
I am with you in Clonkeen
I am with you in Cabo
I am with you in Oaklands
I was with you at Wesley I think
I am with you in Terminal 2
Come Rhyme With Me at ABSOLUT Fringe
We did the Fringe. It was fun. When we started Come Rhyme With Me we never thought we’d get to perform at our favourite theatre festival. As Dizzee Rascal once said, “if you believe, you can achieve, innit.”
