MiddleMarch17 by The Prongs
St Patrick has been industrially co-opted by the tourism sector. By 2023, he has become a spiv, a gangster, a reluctant patron, rich from embezzled emigrants’ remittances. "Some economic militia put a price on his head/The diaspora hires a hitman to do the job instead.”
Tracklist
| 1. | MiddleMarch17 | 3:45 |
Lyrics
MiddleMarch17
Festooned trucks from the factories preen
MiddleMarch17
Day the whole world turns shades of green
MiddleMarch17
Masters of brand and the whole charade
MiddleMarch17
Saintly man and the annual parade
MiddleMarch17
***
Patrick St Patrick
I’m no longer afraid
Patrick St Patrick
It’s the way that I’m made
Patrick St Patrick
The name that I took
From a hero wielding a crosier hook
The patron saint and perpetual myth
Benign icon for Ireland’s kin and its kith
St Patrick please bless our balance of trade
Gross domestic product – we export the home-made
St Patrick: avatar of the banished-snakes brigade
MiddleMarch17: Off to the parade
***
MiddleMarch17
Life stretches from the infinity of being young and keen
To the wastelands of the middle-aged demographic mean
MiddleMarch17
From plywood and formica gleams retro sheen
It’s MiddleMarch, it’s 17
Industry markets this well-oiled machine
Shades of green spill from cans of paint
Patrick now needs the patience of a saint
Parade kicks off from Parnell Square
Slither past the GPO, Eason’s and some assassin’s lair
Inside: Vengeful, nervous and overwrought
A migrant psycho needs just one clear shot
A bouncing bullet, a patsy and not to get caught
Some economic militia put a price on his head
The diaspora hires a hitman to do the job instead
Patrick will pass through the crosswire but never be dead
Postboxes are green, they’re not blood-red
A shot rings out
The mail boat sinks
National saint slumps forward
Another large round of drinks
It's Kilburn, Stockwell
The closed King Ludd
The Sir Alfred Hitchcock
They’re spilling pints like blood
A shot rings out around the world
The parade’s a damp squib, the bullet’s a dud.
MiddleMarch17
The national saint and his stolen identity
Sign on as him as a DHSS non-entity
But ahead of the serpent, ahead of the pack
St Patrick chose his moment: he knew when to come back.
In the middle of March from East 17
Set off at 11am and drink the slate clean
Stockwell Swan
Railway Tavern
Spice of Life
Intrepid Fox
George Robey
King Ludd
Sir Alfred Hitchcock
Three-leaf clover
Constrained by the crumbled cliffs of Dover
Shamrock pinned to a boy’s cable-stitch knitted pullover
Banished forever but it’s never over
North, south, east and west
Homing pigeon calms its troubled breast
And returns lest
It loses sight of its broken-twig nest.
Credits
All music: Niall Toner
All words/voice: John Fleming
License
All rights reserved.
Ears tuned to the kaleidoscopic new wave, The Prongs are plugged in. Fleming’s words weave a memory net for years that never quite slipped by while Toner’s multi-instrumentalism mines eternal pop. It's a lyrical evocation of psycho-sociology and angry young manism aged into post-punk pop permanence. Dublin-based, The Prongs make literate catchy tunes fuelled by JF's lost novel The Now Now Express.