Ballyheather

Andy come quick the cow has a  big swollen belly
Bring the knife to let out the air before she dies
With one quick stab the rushing wind stinks
We save her life she quickly mends relived

The night the bull got out during the storm
Trampled mammy's garden of  sweet williams
His snorts along with clashing  of thunder clouds
While we hid under the bed covers upstairs
His bellowing breath seems close enough

Next day the gentle rain washes the pathways
I walk up the hill of the Brocky Brays covered
In yellow win bushes the yellow comforts me
I sit like a queen surveying my own Ballyheather
The place of my soul the green fields of heart

The wind gathers my hair in all directions
I see the corn barley and wheat growing
The cows and sheep grazing peacefully
I am the queen of my own castle without walls
Here I can be alone and alive and free to be

Northern Irish Dead

Mostly men between the ages of nineteen and twenty four
The life blood of another generation gone gone forever now
The earth over your graves  quiet and gentle the flowers
The hand of war has no joy  no  heart or compassion
Bullets landmines assault with heavy objects or knives
The prayers uttered for the journey of your souls flight
Next life you have an unexplained pain in your body now
Last life you were found brutally murdered on a side road
In a car on a lane in a back alley no matter where you died
Loved ones mourned carried your coffins of yellow birch
Dear beloved lonely ones I am so very very sorry that you
You alone took the brunt for a political staged game of war

Sisters brothers auntie uncles fathers mothers wives husband
Northern Ireland  eight hundred years and counting dead
In streets and lonely roads your blood is still haunting us
What will it take to clear the pain away to let us smile again
A thousand brushes  with a willow wand would gather in
The collective sorrow heal in our hearts us left behind here
Walking in the memory of your dreadful car bomb deaths
A single bullet to the head from a passing car or army jeep
Blood fresh red congealing  flows and flows from you all
No matter how much water and soapy suds we use it stays
How can so many memories fit on one page words flow
Trying to convey your last breathes impossible to say now
Your only a skeleton in the bottom of a grave bones yellow
Or a dust in the wind a particle in time a grain of sand now

What can I say to you you that died for a  drummed up ploy
it just goes on and on and one and one why are we here
Here on this earth of green and growing breathing life
Why are we here to soil the earth with our own hatred
When will man learn to love really love and live well
Forget about the suffering here below and learn to dance
Dance and smile laugh and wave a run naked in the sun