Homage To Shane MacGowan Picked
One of this centuries finest writers beset by the Irish creatives tendency for self destruction. Of course you’re always gonna be better off reading his words than anything I can write about him.
Homage to Shane Macgowan
I saw a pot of gold
Sitting slumped by the road
He was beautiful and broken.
And shone with alabaster
Broken teeth and shame.
His words were gold.
He was rotting
In his prison
But still glowed
With all thats great
Of the greatest of hungers.
He was Behan
He was Mangan
He was unshaven.
He flowed with a love
That only he could see
With fiddles and poteen.
He’ll always be Christmas
In downtown New York.
The NYPD choir
Will always sing
For everyone
As he thinks of Galway bay
His love was Victoria
But he saw snakes and smoke.
His voice rasped
unbroken
And his throat growled
As he sang of the road.
One day you’ll leave us
Your beauty still there.
Over a Martini and ice.
You’ve driven our world
With gravel in your voice
Flan O’Brian on your back
Were still here Macgowan
So come give us one more
To remember you by.
We’ll plant a tree of rowan
And raise a glass or three.
Your words of beauty
Words of shame.
As you shout out your songs
As they live down the years.
you won’t want our love.
And you don’t want our tears
From our dirty old towns.
So one day he’ll be gone
But like Behan and Mangan
He’ll always live on
Down that old main drag
Growling out stories
Of a broken old fag.
A brave and beautiful tribute to a talent that went like so many others…Sensitive, creative types, often find this world too much to bear without the mellowing effects of something to dull the pain of existence as they see it.
I also LOVE Tom Waites btw. Give me a broken soul who was fatally flawed but spoke truth than some lily-livered, weak hand-shaked shallow git like a politician etc.
Pity more cannot look beyond the outer facade to the intensity of feeling in the indwelling soul.
Alison x
Wow thank you, My profile will tell you my preferences and they’re nearly all broken in one way or another, but the Irish do seem to have a proclivity for self destruction. Of course the others, Kerouak decided to die, but being a catholic couldn’t commit suicide, so decided publicly to drink himself to death which he achieved in a year. Thank you for your comments on my words… I agree with your comments, creativity in the artistic sense is missing from those politicians with the lily-livered hand shake, its impossible for that psychopathy to “see” or “feel” what those… Read more »
Enjoyed this M 🙂
Cheers mate.
pure gold.
the pub scene reminded me of the time I was driving through Kilkenny and its environs late at night and came upon this pub, which just appeared like a ghost in the road ahead, and was privileged to share in the best company and singing that a soul could wish for. And at the end of it was able to top up on essentials at the same time!
A magical place to escape to. They’re the best… the “suddenly there was this pub and….”
Brave and beautiful indeed. People are washed and shaped from birth by the particular strain of contaminated flood water in which they were born to swim. This leads us to have some basically inexplicable feelings about some of our fellow swimmers – especially those born in another stream. There is always something that doesn’t ‘fit’. Feeling that, rather than accepting that, Is that the ‘pain of existence’ [attrib: Stormwolf] that causes the ‘self-destruction’ we talk about? Someday, I hope, we will realise that we are all co-creators and all deserve to be recognised as such, whether we be cleaners, cooks,… Read more »
Yes griff, I agree, Shane was moulded in his young years, they had no electricity, he said they would just “piss out of the door” and “shit” in the fields. He was given two pints of Guinness a day from eight and drank his first bottle of whiskey aged eleven. Talking about having no chance? But also you have to consider that’s what moulded him, and maybe without that upbringing the magic wouldn’t have appeared? I always say everyone has a story to tell! and all you have to do is sit there and listen long enough and eventually the… Read more »
Charles Bukowski, Jim Morrison, Dylan Thomas, the list goes on. Going where you don’t come back seems to be an inspiration to write what others can’t. Not familiar with this gentleman but enjoyed the poem and i will look him up when i get the chance.
Please do look him up. You must eventually find “Fairytale of New York” the finest Christmas song ever written. He’s a treasure.
https://youtu.be/j9jbdgZidu8
With Kirsty MacColl.