Margaret Reed O'Shaughnessy - Kevin Devine

Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy

Thank Christ I’m not your enemy

There’s no struggler loves ya more than me

Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy

Margaret ground against her knuckles

To hold her temper at her teeth

Funerals are triggers in an Irish family

And daddy was a lion

But he also was a louse

She swallowed twice to

Clear the bile from her mouth

The house, awash with sycophants

Instantly enshrined

The parish priest, the butcher’s boy

The football player’s wife

All busy painting angel wings

Complicit in the lie

That’s the way we Irish do it when we die

Riddles wrapped in rosary

Clover grenades

Fools who suffer mightily

As our high Saint Sinead

We celebrate our loneliness

Our combustible rage

«He made us this way»

Not that Margaret wasn’t her own complicated layer cake

Educator/activist —

Republican gone straight

Traded Weather Underground

For some peacetime in the shade

But in her heart of hearts

She is as she was made

When she shaved her head

At Trinity and toured BDSM

Clinical, athletic sex —

Detached, competitive

The discipline appealed to her

The flogging and the rules

But the emptiness roared back when she was through

A missile wrapped in rosary

A clover grenade

Fools were suffered mightily

She shot sharp like Sinead

And bristled at her loneliness

Her combustible rage

«They made me this way»

Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy

Thank Christ I’m not your enemy

There’s no struggler lovers ya more than me

Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy

Margaret learned to make her fate

When Uncle James lisped with a wink

«If you’re not tall enough to touch the bar

You’re not tall enough to drink!»

She jumped and smacked it with her palm

The day that she turned six;

She’s wrestled Jameson’s and Guinness ever since

(And tonight she’s losing

Tonight she’s getting her ass kicked)

My missile wrapped in rosary

My clover grenade

Fools picked apart her sanity

She collapsed like Sinead

Encircled in her loneliness

Her combustible rage

«Who made me this way?»

Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy

Thank Christ I’m not your enemy

There’s no struggler loves ya more than me

Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy

Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy

Oh, Margaret Reed O' Shaughnessy