72 HOURS RAW IN DUBLIN
PART ONE
"AN ENDING FITTING FOR THE START..."
"AN ENDING FITTING FOR THE START..."
The speaker-system screeches for a second, a voice rises
out the mire;
“Warning. There are pickpockets at work in this station.
Please be aware, there are thieves currently active in
this station.”
I look about me, a buncha youths are wandering towards
the shit-dens, a hastily-concocted look of feigned
innocence hanging from off their pierced eyebrows.
I doubt I need worry a bishop’s wank about them, since
for one thing, I look like I just crawled out a
vagrant's arse, and for another, I don’t got much for to
offer those fag-stained digits. I dunno how it works
nowadays, but I presume crack-dealers still ain’t overly
keen for to trade a wrap or nine for a buncha A4-pages
covered in biro scrawls relating to some thought or
other I thunk a while back.
S’all I got, man. S’all I got to my mother’s maiden name.
Again with the static and the warning, and then oh,
turns out the train for Belfast is boarding right the
hell now, best pick up that back-breaking bag a yours
and take your wretched hide out onto the platform.
A sigh seepin through the lips, the coffee too cold to
finish, a nod in the direction of Sir Fleming.
What the nod says is, this is us, it would appear.
I ain’t got the strength to force any words out the
face, on account of the gut-searing agony, on account of
I’m mentally and spiritually double-fucked, on account
of the brain feels like an arsehole been at the mercy of
a three-pronged African dildo for the past month.
Every step towards the fella stood checking the tickets,
one step further away from what a man tasted this past
weekend, here, in the guts of Dublin City, in the midsta
this cosmopolitan, freewheelin, dope-drenched, dropped-
D, Savage Purple intensity.
And oh, yeah, Jarvis Cocker in the head-holes;
“And you want to phone your mother,
And say,
‘Mother, I can never come home again,
Cause I seem to have lost an important part of my brain…
Somewhere…’”
The disc skips, holy fuck, it’s only Mark E Smith, he’s
sayin;
“This was the greatest time of my life,
These are the biggest times
Of my life”
A final thrust in the direction of young Connor, his
fringe bleeding cross the minor chords, he’s assuring me;
“I’ve never felt so seh-eh-per-rit…
And then there’s you but that’s so obvious,
So I’ll just say it’s hopeless
And I know this,
It’s why I can’t dream”
Luther’s fuck, I can feel the emo rising inside a me. I
get visions of too much mascara and awkward glances and
4-track declarations of some unobtainable love or other,
I feel my stance getting ever more askew, feel the hair
getting ever more artfully dishevelled.
Stepping towards the hum of the train, a howl grips the
soul, memories grip the skull-paste;
Wandering round Temple Bar couple days ago, myself and
Sir Fleming, delegates of Mondo Irlando here on
Important Fucking Business, black-caverns in the skull,
ranting at a fella with an electric guitar and a hair-
cut someplace south of My Chemical Romance.
“By fuck’s malignant grace, man, tell me where I can
hear some fucking jazz!”
Sir Fleming steps forward. “Yes, tell us, pray god! I
demand to know! Fuck! I want saxophones fit to shred the
pink from my gums!”
The busker looks terrified. All he knows is that there’s
talk of some piano bar someplace might well suit our
current head-states.
“Has it got jazz? If it ain’t got jazz I don’t wanna
hear this shit, see, I don’t wanna hear it!”
The fella shrugs. “Got some funk. S’kinda like jazz, I
guess. Black folks and stuff.”
We ended up sat in a red-light bar with Koyaanisqatsi on
the screen and horrific europop techno bleeding out the
DJ’s twisted fuzz. Two fellas are embracing and
whispering few heads to the right, one of them sniggers
and says “That’s domination talk, that.”
Both of them stagger out a toilet cubicle a while later,
reeking of fresh discarded fuck.
I woulda inspected the scene, but I was blinded by the
visions further back the psyche, visions of The Duke
holding a paperback in the direction of that busker
bastard, saying all bout how I oughta paper-cut the
fucker to within an inch of his last wank on account of
the foul hive of numbing nothing what he done directed
us towards.
If it hadn’t been for the procession of hippies on the
street outside, all of them drumming and dancing, a
pulsing mass of rhythmic abandon, if it hadn’t been for
the beauty inherent in the scene I dare say we’d have
ended up knee-deep in a knife-fight.
A break in the reel, the train-station comes back into
focus, and Bob Dylan, he’s saying;
“And now as I’m leaving, I’m weary as hell,
The confusion I’m feeling, ain’t no tongue can tell”
And I’m battering a text message into the mobile phone,
something along the lines of “Our Sinéad, I can’t
possibly for a second step onto this carriage. I can’t
possibly leave this place. Mother of fuck, I can’t bear
to watch this glorious city fade into the industrial
monotony of Outer Belfast.”
But I did. I suffered that unspeakable horror for five
hours, with every mile removed seething with the kinda
pain known only to folks who maybe pay for to have a
heated blade inserted in the urethra once a fortnight.
And sat trying to make sense of it all at half four in
the AM with Metal Machine Music ripping ragged flesh
from out the eardrum-holes, attempting to decipher the
reams of notes with a speed-fried Lou Reed undergoing
some kind of ECT trauma via the fret-board.
A terrible, terrifying loneliness, the kinda fear a man
catches only in the couple seconds before dawn if he’s
lucky, a crippling sense of loss, all conspiring for to
ensure that tonight there ain’t gonna be no talk of the
Adventure, just a harrowing stroll cross the brain-
planes spent picking whispers out the fog of the
aftermath.
And the priest, he’s sat on the sofa with a pint a vodka
in one hand (liberal sprinklings of ground valium
floating round the surface, course), and the other
pointing at me, that sneer a his starting at the seam of
his shirt and ending someplace in the light-bulb
overhead.
“Fuck up you insufferable cock”, he’s spitting. “If I
hear another word of this I’ll shit myself in two.”
Go fuck yourself, is what The Duke counters with. What
the fuck do you know? You know nothing! You know nothing
of the Italian fella who looked a bit like Ben Stiller,
for example, you know nothing bout how Dave Mustaine’s
sneer hit him like a shota wasp-fuck to the cack-hole.
You know nothing bout the way Fringe #6 gave me the
kinda look could only mean his head was soaked in
delusions of outrageous filth fit only for shaming
science.
More, I say, leaning into the theologian’s putrid yap.
You know nothing bout the Savage Purple. You know
nothing bout that aura, you jaded old bastard, you know
nothing bout how being in the grip of that aura filled
me with the kinda faith you’ve studied for years and
never once tasted.
It burns my throat to breathe outside of that aura, I
tell him.
He doesn’t understand, because how could he?
He doesn’t even know what Savage Purple means, and I’m
too raw for to explain it yet, I need a couple night’s
wortha chemically-enhanced kip and a few thousand strums
of a battered acoustic fore I could even begin to think
about referring directly to “her” as opposed to wrapping
the narrative round metaphor and obscure reference.
Even if I were to point out what this note right here
about “I dunno if I miss Dublin so much as I miss the
‘lectric whip-crack of her smile cross the night-time”
actually means, even then it’d be like expecting him to
get the same rush from a shitty black-and-white
reproduction of Piss Christ as he might get from
standing before the article itself, framed by the
shrieking white of the gallery walls. It’s a second hand
experience, it’s a teenager in 2005 reading about how
amazing The Clash were in 1977.
“Balls”, he hisses, “Go wank or somethin. You’re
pathetic. An’ anyway, the fuck you yacking on about?
Look at you! With the busted teeth you never fixed and
the eyes sunk in the head and the gawky grin. All the
prose in the world, all the sonnets you can muster, none
of that, none, I say, will make you one hooker’s fart
more attractive to her. There’s more chance of Dublin
uprooting and dancing a drunken jig cross Thailand than
there is of anyone so beautifully decadent and talented
and inspiring feeling anything other than kinda-guilty
tolerance for the likes a you. You make me sick to my
granny’s balls.”
For sure, I say, you got a sharp tongue for someone
doesn’t even fucking exist unless I feel like colouring
a narrative a tad.
I could let those barbed-wire observations draw blood,
but no, I just ignore the old cunt because he’s offering
nothing of any use to me, and anyhow, I’m trying to read
the following note I made whilst trying not to weep my
guts out my eyes;
“Looking up from the paperback for a second I see
curious globs of indeterminate colour floating towards
the far end of the train-carriage. Hundreds at first,
then dozens, then a couple hangers-on are all that’s
left.
As Newry station rises from the mire to my right, I
realise that yeah, those strands of shifting goo, that’s
my soul right there, it got stuck somewhere in the
bowels of a mosh-frenzy on Grafton Street, a thread of
my being snagged on Phil Lynott’s brass bass,
unravelling, feeling emptier with every inch travelled.”
Also;
“Two lit-up signs on the motorway. “END” and “END”. End.
It is.”
17 pages prior, a series of scribblings relating to how
the blue-eyes a man might see on O’Connell Street on a
Friday afternoon are of the kinda blue to be found
absolutely nowhere else. Folks sit on the pavements with
binoculars and disposable-cameras, all gathered for to
see that divine shade for themselves, arguments erupting
between veterans of the scene, talk of “Don’t you dare
say that was blue right there, that was green, I’ve seen
blue, my man, you’ll know when it’s blue”, and then a
counter along the lines of “My hole it was green! That
was a pair a blue eyes, blue as the balls a Mary.”
Dawn-light piercing the gloom, iTunes long since
shuffled along in the direction of Time (The Revelator)
by Gillian Welch, the blinks getting that bit longer
every time, sure enough sign that no, time for to put
this all out the way for an hour or eight, there’s no
way any sort of coherent narrative can be grasped here
and now.
Best to pop a couple sleepers on the tongue, let Gillian
draw me someplace close to unconsciousness.
“I dream a highway back to you”, she’s singing.
And the walls getting further away with every note.
Thanks folks
Back To The 72 Hours Raw In Dublin Index
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
out the mire;
“Warning. There are pickpockets at work in this station.
Please be aware, there are thieves currently active in
this station.”
I look about me, a buncha youths are wandering towards
the shit-dens, a hastily-concocted look of feigned
innocence hanging from off their pierced eyebrows.
I doubt I need worry a bishop’s wank about them, since
for one thing, I look like I just crawled out a
vagrant's arse, and for another, I don’t got much for to
offer those fag-stained digits. I dunno how it works
nowadays, but I presume crack-dealers still ain’t overly
keen for to trade a wrap or nine for a buncha A4-pages
covered in biro scrawls relating to some thought or
other I thunk a while back.
S’all I got, man. S’all I got to my mother’s maiden name.
Again with the static and the warning, and then oh,
turns out the train for Belfast is boarding right the
hell now, best pick up that back-breaking bag a yours
and take your wretched hide out onto the platform.
A sigh seepin through the lips, the coffee too cold to
finish, a nod in the direction of Sir Fleming.
What the nod says is, this is us, it would appear.
I ain’t got the strength to force any words out the
face, on account of the gut-searing agony, on account of
I’m mentally and spiritually double-fucked, on account
of the brain feels like an arsehole been at the mercy of
a three-pronged African dildo for the past month.
Every step towards the fella stood checking the tickets,
one step further away from what a man tasted this past
weekend, here, in the guts of Dublin City, in the midsta
this cosmopolitan, freewheelin, dope-drenched, dropped-
D, Savage Purple intensity.
And oh, yeah, Jarvis Cocker in the head-holes;
“And you want to phone your mother,
And say,
‘Mother, I can never come home again,
Cause I seem to have lost an important part of my brain…
Somewhere…’”
The disc skips, holy fuck, it’s only Mark E Smith, he’s
sayin;
“This was the greatest time of my life,
These are the biggest times
Of my life”
A final thrust in the direction of young Connor, his
fringe bleeding cross the minor chords, he’s assuring me;
“I’ve never felt so seh-eh-per-rit…
And then there’s you but that’s so obvious,
So I’ll just say it’s hopeless
And I know this,
It’s why I can’t dream”
Luther’s fuck, I can feel the emo rising inside a me. I
get visions of too much mascara and awkward glances and
4-track declarations of some unobtainable love or other,
I feel my stance getting ever more askew, feel the hair
getting ever more artfully dishevelled.
Stepping towards the hum of the train, a howl grips the
soul, memories grip the skull-paste;
Wandering round Temple Bar couple days ago, myself and
Sir Fleming, delegates of Mondo Irlando here on
Important Fucking Business, black-caverns in the skull,
ranting at a fella with an electric guitar and a hair-
cut someplace south of My Chemical Romance.
“By fuck’s malignant grace, man, tell me where I can
hear some fucking jazz!”
Sir Fleming steps forward. “Yes, tell us, pray god! I
demand to know! Fuck! I want saxophones fit to shred the
pink from my gums!”
The busker looks terrified. All he knows is that there’s
talk of some piano bar someplace might well suit our
current head-states.
“Has it got jazz? If it ain’t got jazz I don’t wanna
hear this shit, see, I don’t wanna hear it!”
The fella shrugs. “Got some funk. S’kinda like jazz, I
guess. Black folks and stuff.”
We ended up sat in a red-light bar with Koyaanisqatsi on
the screen and horrific europop techno bleeding out the
DJ’s twisted fuzz. Two fellas are embracing and
whispering few heads to the right, one of them sniggers
and says “That’s domination talk, that.”
Both of them stagger out a toilet cubicle a while later,
reeking of fresh discarded fuck.
I woulda inspected the scene, but I was blinded by the
visions further back the psyche, visions of The Duke
holding a paperback in the direction of that busker
bastard, saying all bout how I oughta paper-cut the
fucker to within an inch of his last wank on account of
the foul hive of numbing nothing what he done directed
us towards.
If it hadn’t been for the procession of hippies on the
street outside, all of them drumming and dancing, a
pulsing mass of rhythmic abandon, if it hadn’t been for
the beauty inherent in the scene I dare say we’d have
ended up knee-deep in a knife-fight.
A break in the reel, the train-station comes back into
focus, and Bob Dylan, he’s saying;
“And now as I’m leaving, I’m weary as hell,
The confusion I’m feeling, ain’t no tongue can tell”
And I’m battering a text message into the mobile phone,
something along the lines of “Our Sinéad, I can’t
possibly for a second step onto this carriage. I can’t
possibly leave this place. Mother of fuck, I can’t bear
to watch this glorious city fade into the industrial
monotony of Outer Belfast.”
But I did. I suffered that unspeakable horror for five
hours, with every mile removed seething with the kinda
pain known only to folks who maybe pay for to have a
heated blade inserted in the urethra once a fortnight.
And sat trying to make sense of it all at half four in
the AM with Metal Machine Music ripping ragged flesh
from out the eardrum-holes, attempting to decipher the
reams of notes with a speed-fried Lou Reed undergoing
some kind of ECT trauma via the fret-board.
A terrible, terrifying loneliness, the kinda fear a man
catches only in the couple seconds before dawn if he’s
lucky, a crippling sense of loss, all conspiring for to
ensure that tonight there ain’t gonna be no talk of the
Adventure, just a harrowing stroll cross the brain-
planes spent picking whispers out the fog of the
aftermath.
And the priest, he’s sat on the sofa with a pint a vodka
in one hand (liberal sprinklings of ground valium
floating round the surface, course), and the other
pointing at me, that sneer a his starting at the seam of
his shirt and ending someplace in the light-bulb
overhead.
“Fuck up you insufferable cock”, he’s spitting. “If I
hear another word of this I’ll shit myself in two.”
Go fuck yourself, is what The Duke counters with. What
the fuck do you know? You know nothing! You know nothing
of the Italian fella who looked a bit like Ben Stiller,
for example, you know nothing bout how Dave Mustaine’s
sneer hit him like a shota wasp-fuck to the cack-hole.
You know nothing bout the way Fringe #6 gave me the
kinda look could only mean his head was soaked in
delusions of outrageous filth fit only for shaming
science.
More, I say, leaning into the theologian’s putrid yap.
You know nothing bout the Savage Purple. You know
nothing bout that aura, you jaded old bastard, you know
nothing bout how being in the grip of that aura filled
me with the kinda faith you’ve studied for years and
never once tasted.
It burns my throat to breathe outside of that aura, I
tell him.
He doesn’t understand, because how could he?
He doesn’t even know what Savage Purple means, and I’m
too raw for to explain it yet, I need a couple night’s
wortha chemically-enhanced kip and a few thousand strums
of a battered acoustic fore I could even begin to think
about referring directly to “her” as opposed to wrapping
the narrative round metaphor and obscure reference.
Even if I were to point out what this note right here
about “I dunno if I miss Dublin so much as I miss the
‘lectric whip-crack of her smile cross the night-time”
actually means, even then it’d be like expecting him to
get the same rush from a shitty black-and-white
reproduction of Piss Christ as he might get from
standing before the article itself, framed by the
shrieking white of the gallery walls. It’s a second hand
experience, it’s a teenager in 2005 reading about how
amazing The Clash were in 1977.
“Balls”, he hisses, “Go wank or somethin. You’re
pathetic. An’ anyway, the fuck you yacking on about?
Look at you! With the busted teeth you never fixed and
the eyes sunk in the head and the gawky grin. All the
prose in the world, all the sonnets you can muster, none
of that, none, I say, will make you one hooker’s fart
more attractive to her. There’s more chance of Dublin
uprooting and dancing a drunken jig cross Thailand than
there is of anyone so beautifully decadent and talented
and inspiring feeling anything other than kinda-guilty
tolerance for the likes a you. You make me sick to my
granny’s balls.”
For sure, I say, you got a sharp tongue for someone
doesn’t even fucking exist unless I feel like colouring
a narrative a tad.
I could let those barbed-wire observations draw blood,
but no, I just ignore the old cunt because he’s offering
nothing of any use to me, and anyhow, I’m trying to read
the following note I made whilst trying not to weep my
guts out my eyes;
“Looking up from the paperback for a second I see
curious globs of indeterminate colour floating towards
the far end of the train-carriage. Hundreds at first,
then dozens, then a couple hangers-on are all that’s
left.
As Newry station rises from the mire to my right, I
realise that yeah, those strands of shifting goo, that’s
my soul right there, it got stuck somewhere in the
bowels of a mosh-frenzy on Grafton Street, a thread of
my being snagged on Phil Lynott’s brass bass,
unravelling, feeling emptier with every inch travelled.”
Also;
“Two lit-up signs on the motorway. “END” and “END”. End.
It is.”
17 pages prior, a series of scribblings relating to how
the blue-eyes a man might see on O’Connell Street on a
Friday afternoon are of the kinda blue to be found
absolutely nowhere else. Folks sit on the pavements with
binoculars and disposable-cameras, all gathered for to
see that divine shade for themselves, arguments erupting
between veterans of the scene, talk of “Don’t you dare
say that was blue right there, that was green, I’ve seen
blue, my man, you’ll know when it’s blue”, and then a
counter along the lines of “My hole it was green! That
was a pair a blue eyes, blue as the balls a Mary.”
Dawn-light piercing the gloom, iTunes long since
shuffled along in the direction of Time (The Revelator)
by Gillian Welch, the blinks getting that bit longer
every time, sure enough sign that no, time for to put
this all out the way for an hour or eight, there’s no
way any sort of coherent narrative can be grasped here
and now.
Best to pop a couple sleepers on the tongue, let Gillian
draw me someplace close to unconsciousness.
“I dream a highway back to you”, she’s singing.
And the walls getting further away with every note.
Thanks folks
Back To The 72 Hours Raw In Dublin Index
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
