RED LEGS LAMENT
folk etymology under the tropical Sun
head spinning, gut wrenching, colonized fun
4257 miles of sunstroke
Englan’ is a beeeaaatttccchhhhh, my heads away with little folk
Would you like to be Barbadosed?
Come over and get your sugar boom
Forget your natural inferiority
7 years for us and the rest is free
When you put it like that, how can I refuse?
between alcoholism or vagrancy?
Between damp white skin
Or a farmer’s tan and all the shame you can get across the sea
So off we went and so revolting we were,
So troublesome
That the colonizers texted the Crown saying
Don’t be sendin’ any more of those bastard Irish scum
They just don’t do what they’re told hi, and are well happy to break the law
Speak English and Irish and some incomprehensible patoish
Not seeming to care about themselves or the rules
Lounging and shagging and masturbating too
You can kick them and beat them and they just laugh at you, ha ha
Saying don’t you know that you are the fool
In a couple of centuries we’ll be breaking language and colonizing the modernist literature schools
And that is how the story goes, hi
You can thank your lucky stars your troubles cannot compete with the scale of those kind of woes, hi…or maybe they do….
And yet…
I wouldn’t mind being Rhianna
Bright as a button, Top of the morning, sex on legs and the world hooked to you like viagra
Come here rude boy boy is you bog enough
Bogged enough, dogged enough, Beef bourguignon, Are you big enough? I mean what the feck?
And yet…
I’m partial to the ethos of the diamond tipped whip.
Bundini says All Night Long and I feel like I’m shooting from my hip.
So….
Let’s go to martyrs corner and scream in pain
The sun has burnt the back of my legs again
I’m hallucinating the green fields of the insane
And thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t sent to the Carribean
Because we’re all bally red legs
In your mind, in your bed
Tell your mama tell a friend
The only way out is let’s pretend
Is my leg redder than yours?
Is my home indentured?
On the cusp of the insecure
If I had nothing to moan about I’d be in hell for sure
Instead I’m in Limbo
My whole life long
Only now that I’m dead
I sing the Maggie Murtagh song.
Because I’m the Vigilante Cannibal Nun hi.
Red seeps from my legs straight to my gun, hi
I’ll eat the flesh of the rich, the landed, and the hun, hi
Red eats me up and is dripping from my fecking tongue, hi.
So bring it on and on and on and on
My morals are as loose as the pronunciation of this song
I’ve crossed the line and I’m having too much fun bedad
I’m dead but not buried and not lamenting the fun we once had
Because I have no nostalgia for the past
And no fear for the future because the dye is cast
My soul no longer seeks the permission of the organised gas-lighter class
It’s broken. I can’t fix it. I no longer seek peace. At last.
Rock on, Maggie…Hi.
