Dublin Town

Dublin Town. Longing to be misunderstood. Spat upon. Shat upon. Hated by those on the outside and even by some within. A problem child. Abandoned. Forgotten. Left to fend for itself. Its beating heart still beating strong. It’s everyone and everything. It’s that summer in Dublin when the 46A arrived on time. It’s all the streets where the past lives on. Full of the living and the dead. The hustle and bustle. The mad muscling to stay sane. These streets are where I belong. These streets I call my own. We are called the names under the sun. Scumbags. Junkies. Jackeens. Wankers. Mickey Dazzlers. Cunts. We’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but to our own, we are the beautiful ones. Piss takers. History makers. Time wasters. Get up out of that. We are the boys in the better land. We don’t like Mondays or any other day for that matter. We were born to moan. The foot soldiers who stand proud on Hill 16. Win, lose, or draw, we still like to give out. How do you know someone’s from Dublin? Because they tell you. We are six in a row. We are Pearse standing alone outside the GPO. We are northside. We are southside. We are rock and roll. We are Finglas. Cabra. Ballyfermot. Kilmainham, Smithfield, Sallynoggin, Sandymount Ballymun, Stoneybatter, and everywhere in between. Even D4. We are Bohemians. Rovers. Pats. Shelbourne. Even UCD. We are the whole of the moon with none of your crescent shite. We’re the music that’s gone before and what will come. Drew. Kelly. Geldof. Pete Briquette. Bono. The Edge. Adam and Larry. Hansard. O’Connor. Dempsey, Dignam, and the new boys on the block, The Fontaines and the Murder Capital. It’s impossible to name them all. Heroes of renown. We are the ghosts who walk among us, still. Heffo. Mullins. Hanahoe. Keaveney. Fenton. McCarthy. Giants of a glorious past. The Jacks are back. They never fuckin’ went away I hear you say. Memories, we will treasure forever. Wednesday afternoons in Lansdowne before Jack, beating the Dutch, the French, or whoever came our way. Moments that make the world a magical place, watching a young Diego Maradona do his thing. Names slipping off the tongue. Henry. Grafton. Dame. George’s. Streets aligned. Northside. Southside. The two so separately entwined. We strut along the quays like we’re the bee’s knees. And then there are the places we go to drink and tell stories. The waxy gargle loosens the tongue until it runs against the tide. The Long Hall. O’Donoghue’s. The Cobblestone. The Gravediggers, where one night I asked the barman, Do you have an ashtray only to be told I was standing on it. What’s the story? Get up outta that. Banjaxed. Bleedin’ massive. Deadly. Who’s yer one? William Butler. Shaw. Joyce. Beckett. Wilde. Swift. Stoker. Men of words and much, much more. Constance Markievicz. Grace O’Malley. Sinéad O’Connor. Molly Malone. Women who were shown the door, but still wouldn’t go home. Buskers waiting for their turn on Grafton. We are coddle and Leo Burdoch’s and whatever you’re having yourself. We talk too fast and walk too slowly. The times we spent waiting under Cleary’s clock that we’ll never get back. We are unbowed. Proud. We watch silently as Shane makes his last journey home to Tipp. What’s going on? What’s going down? The homeless in the doorway begging to be seen. The times that shook the city. 1916. 2023. Police cars burning in a changing town. And for what? For a government that’s not for turning. Too busy dancing to the EU drum. They don’t want to hear it. Too happy to look the other way. The fingers in the greasy till are greasy still. We’re living to survive. But still, we’re good at finding some hope in the cracks. Collecting the bread crumbs thrown our way. Croker on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon. A blue rhapsody. The smell of hash mixed with the Palestinian flags dotted amongst the blue. Gangland. Guinness. Farrell. Gleeson. Ronan. Dubs making it the big screen. Whilst here we glorify the obscene. The Regency is etched into our psyche. And still, despite it all, Dublin is for dreamers. It’s full of comedy gold and shite and characters who would wake the dead out in Glasnevin. Dublin is so magical in its misery that there’s still no other place I’d rather be.