Don’t Give up On Me
Some days we’re the best of friends
Some days you’re my enemy
But even if we don’t agree
O Darlin’ don’t give up on me
Sometimes our love turns to hate
Some days I even curse my fate
That you became my destiny
Sorry don’t give up on me
(ch) Don’t give up on me oh don’t give up on me
O Darlin’ don’t give up on me..
Shouting and screaming egos hurt
Losing our sense of self worth
Who’s the strongest let me see
O darlin’ don’t give up on me
We will walk through fields of clover
You and this old Irish Rover
Somewhere where all souls are free
And Darlin’ don’t give up on me
(ch)
All our fighting’s in the past
Let’s try to make the good times last
You win whatever a good man I will be
Let’s stick it out and we will be
Happy as two birds in a tree
Warbling free from misery
Together again then let us be
And Darlin’ don’t give up on me
(ch)
Kavanagh
(This is about my favourite Irish poet)
Kavanagh loved humanity
He sang for all the world to hear
Suffering redemption then eternity
Was our lot and there was nothing to fear…
He sang and his words were drowned in scorn
Sophisticated folks from Dublin Town
Looked down their noses at the place he was born
And said: ‘this person is really a clown’
And so the war raged on
Poet versus society
The battle never has been won
Or lost, I’d say, indefinitely
So on with the battlecry on I say
I’m off my helmet glistens in the sun
a poet’s trade for a poet’s pay
Immortality and endless acres of pun
A soul that gives and a soul that lives
could any man ever ask for more?
Into a sea of words I dive
Like Kavanagh and aim for a certain shore
Where noone speaks in prose just rhyme
Is the beginning and the end of it all
Loosen the toga and let’s have us a time
Here’s a glass to Spring Winter Summer Fall..
Bad News Day
(my attempt at a blues number)
Just a bad news day hurry up and go away
A bad news day I don’t want it any longer to stay
A bad news day nothing but trouble all the way
No wonder my hair’s turning grey
Tell me will one day things ever go right?
Or is it all darkness with patches of light?
The other way around I could handle you bet
There just doesn’t seem to be any hope of that yet
A bad news day hurry up and go away
I don’t want to see you anymore ok?
She took all my money then she went her own way
Wish I coulda stopped her but she said ‘Tooralay’.
Let’s Try Not to Be Sad..
I’ll try not to be sad when you go
If I cry my tears you will not see
Only for a short time we will be
Apart I need to make some dough
Then I’ll be over we’ll have us a time
Hanging around in your old Swedish town
I know I’ll try not to let you down
Alone I’ll drink my vodka and lime…
I’ll send you every dollar I earn
You won’t wait in vain for my return
I’ll read my Ode On A Grecian Urn
At night in bed as the pages of our lives turn..
Books apart and oceans too
I’ve written all these lines for you
That we may be as one later on
I want to say this before you are gone..
Down In The Pub
Down in the pub down in the pub
It’s where I wanna be
Fiddle music in the corner
Pints in front of me
Down in the pub down in the pub
O take me there tonight
Think I’ll pass on Sal’s pizzeria
Or the sportsbar’s televised boxing fight
Down in the pub down in the pub
With a chaser and a good old slag
Had to get out of the house tonight
Where I was only good for a nag
The wife of course she never leaves me alone
She doesn’t understand her man
All I want is a quiet smoke
In the alley and then hear the band….
Down in the pub down in the pub
If I don’t make it there I’ll die
Seven pints later I’m on my way home
To a steak and kidney pie
Down in the pub down in the pub
It really gets me by
I sit on a barstool and talk to my friends
As the moon hangs out in the sky
(the above one is not really about me. I don’t smoke I don’t have
a wife who nags me and I don’t eat steak and kidney pies)
Troubled Land
(About Guatemala where I lived for one year and a half)
It’s a troubled land
Folks riding round with guns in their hands
In a travelling band
Dangerous some people just don’t understand..
Gangs on the corner gangs on the street
Gangs everywhere you place your feet
Your girl on the corner you can’t ever meet
On a Friday night in the midsummer heat
It’s a troubled land
Just below America and noone takes a stand
Against the thugs and juntas who go around
Admiring the poverty all over this ground…
Away From Home
(Memories of being in Dublin (Rathmines to be precise) with an old flame, and sitting there watching the shadows grow, as well as doing other things that cannot be mentioned…another favourite and one that’s consistently requested)
Walking 0n these streets I think of you
All the bad things we used to do
From Grafton Street as far as Dublin Zoo
Alone in this city me and you
(ch)Away from home away from friends
At the windows of my flat our world ends
Sitting on the bed as shadows gather on the wall
Quiet as the footsteps in the hall
You and me together all alone
Someone’s talking outside on the phone
Don’t know how much longer well be here
But maybe once before I leave i’ll shed that tear
(ch)
New York
New York I miss you
I’m telling you now
My window in Queens
Is still there anyhow
Avenues of trees
0ld Spanish delis
0ld conquistadores
0n stoops with big bellies
Leaves on the pavements
After rain
Churches on streetcorners
The rattle of a train
Up on the boulevard
People go by
Far off it’s Manhattan
Like fingers in the sky
New York I miss you
Never thought I would
I couldn’t leave quick enough
You sucked my blood
But now I see you
You don’t look so bad
You can still make a dollar
There’s love to be had
New York New York
I never made it through
Always got bogged down
Right foot but wrong shoe
I might just come back
And try you again
Leaves on the avenue
At evening. Amen.
Call Me Sentimental
We used to walk around the town
Up Flower Hill and down
Every night looking for a fight
Tough men stopping girls for a light
You were a mod I was a punk
You were a swot I was a flunk
I used to sit at the back of the class
I got an honour you got a pass
You were a virgin I was a whore
The problem was I couldn’t score
You feared your oul’ lad I hated mine
We used to drink cider and lotsa cheap wine
You liked The Jam I ate marmalade
I said I’d be famous and your dreams would fade
You went to London I went to New York
You work in a bank I feel like a dork
When I think abut the things we did
Your name was Mozo my name was Sid
Someone told me lately you now have a kid
At least one of us grew up- I still owe you five quid
I’m sure you’ve forgotten- me I have not
I think of my old debts these days quite a lot
Parkas and scooters and dockmartin boots
Call me sentimental- these are my roots
You Are My Everything
You are my morning
You are me evening
You are my daytime too
And I ain’t never leavin’
You are my sun in the sky
You are my star
You are my everything
Just the way you are
You are my nighttime
You are my dreams
You are my good times too
You are my Queen
You are my everything
You are my home
And I know you’re with me
Where’er I roam
You are my victory
You are my fall
You are my everything
You are my all
You are my everything
You are my home
And I know you’re with me
Where’er I roam
Uncle Johnny
Uncle Johnny lived in Queens
Ten or twenty years ago
Took the train to work each day
And a carton of marlboros
Smoked each packet one by one
By sundown
McLoughlin’s in Astoria
Was his favourite pub in town
Used to go there most weekends
And sometimes during the week
Uncle Johnny liked to live
To anybody he’d speak
0n the corner of the dtreet
0n the subway to Times Square
0n the Bell Atlantic canteen line
Everyone knew him there
Took a plane across the pond
Each June of July
Drove a car out west then
Into the mountains high
Just to see the old rock again
The rock where he was born
The house is now an old brick wall
Where cattle graze each morn
‘What have I come back to’
He asks himself ‘just what
It’s just an acre of barren land’
He says ‘no more than that’
Invites me to the local pub
We sit down for a drink
Ten pints later my mother comes
Johnny gives me a wink
‘You shouldn’t be in the pub like that’
She says ‘you should be in bed’
‘There’s time enough for sleeping’
Says my uncle ‘when we’re dead’
At the airport he always sheds a tear
He just hates going back home
He’s got a wife and daughter there
His beerbelly has grown
He’ll be back just another year
We’ll do the same thing again
Doesn’t say goodbye walking up the ramp
In his white suit and sad grin
Back to McLoughlin’s and Atlantic bell
Back to the subway to Queens
Back to his cartons of marlboro
Back to his new world dreams
Stay With Me
Will you stay with me if I stay with you
We’ll find lots of things to do
walking down 9th Avenue
Just us two
I’ll stay with you if you stay with me
When times get hard I won’t hide in a tree
When times get tough beside you I’ll be
You and me
Will you stay with me if I stay with you,
Sometimes we fight yeah sometimes we’re through
The other day in the diner I thought i’d lost you
But I couldn’t let go it was scary but true
I’ll stay with you if you stay with me
Let’s just admit it we never agree
Let’s just admit it this ships’s on the sea
And there’s no turning back let’s try again shall we
Shall we…
Linda
Linda was a waitress,
She worked from ten till four.
She came in with a bad hangover
Set tables on the floor
She hardly spoke to anyone
For an hour or two.
The lunch rush came she had no choice
But smile for me and you.
Going on ten or fifteen years
She worked here at this bar.
Lived in a rent controlled apartment
A mile downtown, not far.
Saw waitresses and waiters come and go
Students, actors, bums.
The money was better way back when…
She drank a couple of rums
Each day when her shift was over
She deserved it yes she did
Some days she served a hundred,
While some of the waiters hid
Not Linda; she was always there,
Running up and down
Serving every customer
Her smile became a frown.
Two rums became three or six;
Fell in love once, no more.
He ran off with a younger girl.
Linda was thirty-four.
Life went on; at least there was money
She dodged bullets every day
Shot from an angry manager
Who gave up drink for tae…
..Till the takings kinda dried.
people ate next door.
Linda couldn’t get a job there.
She was thirty six, or more…
More waiters came and went,
Actors, students, bums,
Living the life in NYC,
Linda drank more rums
And more and more and more
Her tables were cut to four
She was working kinda slower
They were glad when she went out the door.
They didn’t have the heart to fire her,
Loyalty has its rewards.
But they cut her tables to three.
She complained but was not heard.
Her mother’s welfare check
Was not enough to pay the bills.
Those rums she drank were getting expensive;
The half-price deal still killed
Linda’s meagre tips.
She put more lipstick on her lips
And tried to take me home.
I pulled my hand off her hips
And ran into the night.
I never went back to that place.
My tables were down to two.
I heard she vanished without a trace…
Wouldn’t you?
Sheila
Are you working in the civil service,
0r teaching in a school?
Do you take the number 66
Which I followed like a fool,
Down Abbey Street each night at eleven for months,
You were just to cool;
Always playing hard to get
I regret the day we met
(ch)Still I wonder where are you now,
Sheila?
Maybe you met a nice guy
Who takes good care of you;
Never tells you what to do,
He would never cheat it’s true;
Who maybe works in a bank-
If only I had the courage to try
I wouldn’t be so bitter now,
We never really said goodbye,
(ch)Still I wonder where are you now,
Sheila?
I guess I found my way you found yours,
In a room in Paris we came so close,
Then the next day you were gone
I’ll never see you again I suppose
Unless we meet on a bus or a train-
A nice big smile to see you again
And the baby cries I examine your face
I ask for your number but then….then….-
then I wonder where are you now
Sheila?
O what’s the point?- there is no point-
In turning back the years
What’s done is done..Amen….
If I could only see you one more time
Maybe you could be mine again….again
I wonder where are you now
Sheila?
Where are you now
Sheila?
