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L B Mar 2019
I used to run in Nay Aug Park
A natural spot in Scranton
On the road below my feet
Was painted two feet tall
"Free Bobby Sands"
My heart bounced off the words
To know
how he died
Didn't know I could care
that much for anything
I was to learn
Learn how to care
about despair
The list of others is shockingly long.  Not counting those who almost died during the Irish Republican Army Hunger Strike in the 1970s and 80s, many died in riots and street fighting.  They were protesting the British treatment of the Catholics in Northern Ireland, a situation that had gone on since before the "great famine."  Many in Northern Ireland still long to be part of the Irish free republic, outside of British rule.

When people go as far as starving themselves in protest, you know they mean business and believe in their cause.

Later, through the pressure brought by the organizing of both Catholic and Protestant women, they were able to gain some autonomy and peace in Home-rule.  
As with all revolts, the reasons are deeply economic and based in the bigotry of who were the "righteous and the chosen" people.  Sounds so tragically familiar to the conflicts worldwide, like American racial strife, the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians.  These situations are not truly over, I fear.
L B Mar 2019
I fell Once
for a banjo
and an Irish tenor

I have this rebel
daughter
  Mar 2019 L B
Donall Dempsey
BECOMING HIS DAUGHTER

She grasps the air
with her new born

fist
as if

she were stuffing
it down

her own throat
before letting it

circulate within her
until it became her

and then using
her new found voice

let out a great shout.

This cry
is me.

And so, was born
a father at that very

moment
holding her

in his palms
as if she were water

her wail
altering the very

molecules
of the air & how

he could now
never be

the same again ever

since she had decided to be
his daughter.
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